French Dip ala Italiano

I bought a huge, five pound, London Broil last week. After cutting it into five pieces and freezing four of those; I had to come up with a meal for that chunk of meat. And, I could only use what was in the pantry. (My rule to make things more interesting.)

How about a French Dip, I thought. Great, but there was no beef broth to make up the au jus. (We don’t use bouillon cubes; they taste like salt licks to our low sodium taste buds.) Okay, I’ll make up the difference with some merlot; wine is always a good idea when cooking.

I started out by browning the meat on all four sides in some olive oil. I added a sliced onion while the last two sides were browning.

Covering the meat, it went into a 400F oven for 90 minutes, should have shortened it to 60 minutes. While the meat was cooking I made some oven fries by just washing and cutting a couple of potatoes into French fry shapes. Drizzled with olive oil and a sprinkling of thyme they went into the oven 30 minutes before the meat was to come out.

At the same time, I sliced four dried tomatoes and added them to the meat.

When I took the meat from the oven, I put in a couple of sliced and garlic buttered hoagie rolls to heat and crisp up for 10 minutes.

Setting the meat aside to rest, I poured two cups of wine into the pan with a teaspoon of fresh thyme and set it to boil and reduce.

When everything was finished, I sliced the meat on the diagonal, made up the sandwiches, poured the reduced wine sauce into dipping dishes, and served the fries with aioli. YUM!

French Dip ala Italiano

Preheat oven 400F

2 tsp olive oil
1 lb London Broil
1 sliced onion
4 sliced dried tomatoes

2 hoagie rolls

Garlic butter
Thyme

1. In an oven proof pan (with cover), heat oil until it shimmers
2. Add the London broil and brown on all four sides, do not rush this step
3. Add the onion when browning the next to last side
4. When the meat is browned, cover and bake 60 min in oven
5. 30 min before the meat is finished, add the tomatoes
6. Let the meat set 10 minutes before slicing
7. While the meat is cooling, add two cups wine (or broth) and thyme to taste, to the pan and bring to a boil, reduce by half
8. Serve on crusty hoagie rolls spread with garlic butter.