Braciole di Manzo Rapide
Braciole di Manzo Rapide·(bra-CHO-leh dee MAHN-dzo RAH-pee-deh)
Il Sugo della Domenica: The Sacred Sunday Supper
Take a wooden meat mallet to a supermarket top round, flattening the steaks into tight, fatty rolls destined for the heavy bubble of the tomato sauce. But the authentic four-hour braise doesn't fly on a Tuesday night, so by pounding the beef paper-thin—a mechanical tenderization that bypasses the need for melting collagen—and tucking a tiny flake of butter inside to keep it rich, you get the interplay of reduced tomatoes, beef fat, and garlic in forty-five minutes. Tie the bundles with butcher's twine, drop them in a heavy Dutch oven, and let the sauce do the work.
Ingredients
- panko breadcrumbs1 cup
- Pecorino Romano cheese1/2 cup
- sharp provolone cheese1/2 cup
- pine nuts1/4 cup
- raisins1/4 cup
- garlic5 med cloves
- fresh flat-leaf parsley1/4 cup
- extra-virgin olive oil7 tbsp
- top round beef1 1/2 lb
- unsalted butter1 tbsp
- yellow onion1 small
- dry red wine1/2 cup
- crushed tomatoes28 oz
- fresh basil1/2 cup
Method
- 01
Mix the savory sand.
Toss the breadcrumbs, Pecorino, provolone, pine nuts, plumped raisins, minced garlic, and parsley with 3 tablespoons of the olive oil until it feels like wet sand.
- 02
Stuff and roll the meat.
Season the pounded beef with salt and pepper, drop a spoonful of filling and a tiny flake of butter into the center of each piece, fold the edges, and roll them up tightly like cigars before pinning them shut with toothpicks.
- 03
Sear the braciole.
Get 2 tablespoons of olive oil smoking hot in a heavy skillet and aggressively sear the beef rolls until they are deeply browned all over, then pull them out and set them aside.
- 04
Build the quick sugo.
Drop the heat to medium, toss in the onion and smashed garlic with the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and sweat them out until translucent.
- 05
Deglaze and braise.
Pour in the red wine to deglaze the pan and let it reduce by half, then add the crushed tomatoes, sink the braciole back into the sauce, cover, and simmer gently for 30 minutes.
- 06
Finish and serve.
Pull the pan off the heat, pluck out every single toothpick, stir in the torn basil, and serve the braciole with a bowl of rigatoni bathed in the remaining sugo.
Notes
Ask your butcher for a head start.
If you want to skip the aggression of pounding out the meat yourself, ask the butcher counter for a 'carpaccio' or 'milanesa' cut to save yourself 15 minutes of prep.
Hydrate the raisins.
Don't skip soaking the raisins in warm water. Plumping them up beforehand ensures they won't steal precious moisture from the beef during the quick braise.