How to Make Braciole - An Easy Braciole Recipe for a Special Dinner (2024)
Braciole is a recipe that is perfect for a special occasion that only requires 20 minutes of active preparation time. Flank Steak is topped with cheese, herbs, and breadcrumbs, seared, and then roasted in tomato sauce. Let this recipe for Braciole with tomato sauce be your secret weapon for hosting a dinnerparty.
This scalable Braciole recipe requires very little active preparation time, and is a perfect dinner to serve for a special occasion.
Braciole is an Italian meat dish that consists of thin flank steak rolled up with cheese, herbs, and breadcrumbs. The first step to prepare braciole with a tomato sauce is to pound the meat out until it is very thin.
Next you create a mixture of cheese, garlic, and breadcrumbs. I like to use a blend of Parmesan and provolone.
The cheese and breadcrumb mixture gets spread over the steak.
Then you roll up the steak and tie it up with butcher’s twine.
The meat is quickly browned before being cooked low and slow in a pool of tomato sauce.
The result is slices of tender beef with swirls of cheese, herbs, and breadcrumbs. It’s easy and elegant, and sure to impress your dinner guests.
The active preparation time for this recipe is just 20 minutes, and you can easily increase the number of portions by purchasing a larger steak. I love recipes that can be scaled without any extra effort.
If you have a large dutch oven you could even cook two bracioles together.
I like to use my roasted tomato sauce in this recipe. It is my go-to tomato sauce recipe. It is made my pureeing roasted cherry tomatoes and has a really fresh taste.
Sometimes I serve Braciole with roasted potatoes and asparagus.
Most recently I served it with baked penne in tomato sauce and creamy spinach.
And for dessert… I made an angel food cake with a light whipped chocolate frosting – it one of my all-time favorite desserts!
This is one of my favorite meals to serve at a dinner party – the prep work can all be done in advance before guests arrive.
Before we get to the recipe – want some more recipes for a special dinner? Here are some options:
This is my Mom’s recipe for Braciole – it is made with a red wine sauce instead of being cooked in tomato sauce.
I love this Classic Chicken Marsala recipe and it tastes even better then it is made a day ahead of time.
How to make Braciole with Tomato Sauce:
Braciole with Tomato Sauce
Yield: 2-3 servings
Active Time: 20 minutes
Additional Time: 1 hour30 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour50 minutes
Braciole is a recipe that is perfect for a special occasion that only requires 20 minutes of active preparation time. Flank Steak is topped with cheese, herbs, and breadcrumbs, seared, and then roasted in tomato sauce. Let this recipe be your secret weapon for hosting a dinner party.
Ingredients
1 lb - 1.25lb Flank Steak
Salt and Pepper
1/3 cup grated Parmesan
1/3 cup grated Provolone
1/3 cup Italian Breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons finely chopped Italian Parsley
2 cloves pressed or finely chopped garlic
2 tablespoons Butter
1 cup White Wine
3 cups Tomato Sauce
*Butchers Twine
Instructions
First heat your oven to 300 degrees.
Then get started by pounding the flank steak to make it thinner. Pound it for about a minute getting it as thin as possible. Then dust both sides with salt and pepper.
Mix the Parmesan, Provolone, breadcrumbs, parsley, and garlic together in a bowl. Then spread them out evenly on the top of the flank steak.
Next roll up the steak, and tie it closed with 3-4 pieces of butcher's twine. Tie the twine tightly so that the filling won't fall out of the steak as it cooks.
Then melt the butter in a dutch oven over medium high heat, and brown the steak on all sides. This will take about 8 minutes total, turning the steak every 2 minutes.
Once the steak has been browned, add the white wine, and bring to a bubble. Then pour the tomato sauce over the steak, and cover it with a lid, and place it in the oven.
Roast the steak at 300 degrees for 1 1/2 hours, basting the steak every 30 minutes, by spooning the tomato sauce over it.
After 90 minutes, pull the dutch oven out of the oven, and let the braciole rest for 10 minutes before slicing it. Remove the butcher's twine as you slice. Serve immediately after slicing, spooning some of the tomato sauce on top.
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I prefer top round (often sold as London broil) for braciole. It's inexpensive and works great. Depending on where you shop, you may be able to find thinly sliced top round that's marked as “for braciole”, but if you need to filet a whole top round, I walk you through that process in the steps below.
You can easily make braciole a day or two ahead of time, I've done that many times especially for parties. If I make them ahead of time for a party I also like to take my time removing the strings and cutting the rolls while they're cold.
Braciole is an Italian-style roulade, a rolled and stuffed meat. It is also called involtini, or bruciuluni in Sicilian. The etymology of the word translates to slice of meat rolled over coals. The meat — typically beef, veal, or pork — is pounded thin and stuffed with prosciutto, breadcrumbs, cheese, and herbs.
Further, if you haven't pounded the meat thin enough, it can still be tough after cooking, so make sure to pound it to an even, thin slice. Lastly, the cooking time matters, as if you cook it too short it can be tough, so make sure to cook it slow and prolonged to get a more tender result.
Pork is the most common cured meat in Italy, although other meats such as beef, venison and wild boar are also cured. Each region of Italy is known for its own cured meats, known as salumi, based on local customs. Spice plays an important role in the curing of Italian Meats.
While they are quite similar, Spiedini means "skewer" in Italian and can refer to a number of different Italian meat preparations. My recipe uses pecorino Romano, lots of onions, and bay leaves and gets baked, while my braciole uses parmesan, a little bit of garlic, and parsley and is braised.
In Italy, "braciole" often refers to simple grilled slices of meat, usually pork. This is because "braciola" can be a term for any piece of meat cooked over embers or "braci." These are typically smaller pieces of meat, simply seasoned, grilled, and enjoyed right off the fire.
The national food of Italy is a pasta dish that is called Ragu alla Bolognese, which is a Bolognese sauce of meat and tomatoes with tagliatelle pasta. The dish is also sometimes just called Bolognese, because the sauce has become so popular that it is often identified as the meal itself.
On the streets of Palermo, skewered spirals sizzle atop grills, beckoning passersby with the aroma of fire-cooked meat. This is stigghiola, a Sicilian delicacy consisting of lamb or veal intestines.
The Neapolitan-style Braciole recipe is a dish that ran the history of Southern-Italian cuisine! The ingredients of this delicious, rolled meat come from the Ancient Greece, via the discovering of America and the French domination of the territory around Naples.
The cut of beef used for Italian beef is typically chuck. The beef is slow cooked until fall-apart tender, then piled high in a hoagie bun with some of the meat's tasty, sloppy cooking juices.
beef is the king of red meat, and the most Italian cut is the bistecca alla Fiorentina, a very nice version of the T-bone steak! But you'll find stews as well. veal is also commonly seen, used quite like beef. lamb is rare (no pun intended) in the pl.
Italian Beef is chuck roast (the cut of meat used for pot roast) that is slowly cooked with savory Italian spices until it is soft and tender and easily shredded with a fork. To create the iconic sandwich, soft hoagie rolls are filled with this shredded meat, and then topped with sliced provolone and pickled peppers.
Spiraled pancetta is sliced paper thin and usually eaten “raw” either by itself or wrapped around vegetables, much like prosciutto. Pancetta is great for mixing with other foods—think pancetta-wrapped scallops—because the lack of smokey flavor gives it a gentle, less overpowering flavor.
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