Braciole 🇮🇹: Stuffed & Rolled Italian Beef
A Hearty Classic Loved By All
Don’t let the name throw you off…
Braciole (“brah-zhoul”) is a classic italian beef dish where thin beef cutlets are stuffed, rolled, bathed in a tomato sauce then slow cooked until meltingly tender.
The dish saw a resurgence in pop-culture being featured in an episode of “The Bear”, which is one of the most enjoyable food/cooking series I’ve seen in a long time. Season 2 has dropped and I’d recommend giving it a shot if you haven’t seen the series. Season 1 was absolute 🔥
Back to Braciole
This is a dish that can be assembled and cooked with the whole fam. While the beef slowly cooks the rest of the sides, appetizers and dessert can be made.
Back in the day, nonna’s would prep this early on Sunday’s and leave in the oven to slow cook while going to mass with the entire family.
Either way works, what is important is a low and slow cook to get that buttery-tender beef.
Historically small beef cutlets would be pounded thin, stuffed with herbs, breadcrumbs, cheese, then rolled and secured with toothpicks to hold the roulades together.
Nowadays you’ll find upgrades like adding thin sliced prosciutto and dried fruits to the stuffing but that is more of a recent development. This started as a peasant dish and those “luxury ingredients” wouldn’t have been available for a lot of people.
Today I’m doing a different format for you.
Below the full recipe and method will be presented, followed by some shortcuts that can reduce the prep time significantly if you want to go that route.
Drop a note in the comments if you like this approach and will use in future posts where applicable.
Lets Cook 🤝
