Beef Braciole – The Single Best Italian Comfort Meal

Today we’re making classic Italian-American Beef Braciole. The braciole are filled with breadcrumbs, cheese, raisins, and pignoli, rolled, and cooked until tender in a Sunday sauce. This recipe makes enough sauce to toss with 1 pound of pasta. I hope you love it!
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INGREDIENTS
FOR THE SAUCE
1/4 cup (53g) extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion – diced
5 cloves garlic – minced
2 ounces (55g) tomato paste
1/2 cup (120g) dry red wine
3 28-ounce cans plum tomatoes – hand crushed or blender pulsed
salt and pepper – to taste
1/2 cup (120g) water – plus more if required to thin sauce
FOR THE BRACIOLE
2 pounds (908g) top round
1/4 cup (53g) extra virgin olive oil
3 cloves garlic – paste
1/2 cup flat-leaf Italian parsley – minced
1 cup (100g) breadcrumbs
1/4 cup (35g) raisins or currants soaked in water then drained
1/4 cup (35g) pine nuts
3 tablespoons (42g) extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup (50g) Pecorino Romano – grated
olive oil – for shallow frying
1/2 cup (120g) dry red wine
salt and pepper – to taste

VIDEO EDITOR:
Billy Mark: @bluecrestproductions

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Today we’re going to make beef brol I love this recipe my family loves this recipe here are all the ingredients let’s get into it right now all right I always like to go over the ingredients it helps me make the meal perfectly but it will help you even more like getting

Everything set so on this side here is the brol side this is everything that you need for the brol we have top round top brown beef is a typical beef that’s used for bajol it’s very inexpensive it can be filleted it can be pounded out

Thin and you can use other types of beef too like flank sirloin which are more expensive if you go to Costco you’ll probably be able to find that for about $4 a pound this place Meat Farms that’s a local place you know they slice it for

You and that you know this is part of the reason why you’ll know that this is the type of beef that’s used for brol okay so it actually says right here top round brol this is the beef of choice for it it doesn’t mean you can’t use

Other beef you absolutely can the other ingredients for this after we fillet this and pound these out really nicely we’re going to make like a paste basically to put in we’re going to have a cup of breadcrumbs I have a/4 cup of pine nuts or pinoli nuts the recipe says

Three cloves of garlic I have five here because I’m going to grade it so I won’t be able to grade it all so Garlic’s kind of a personal preference you can back off if you want a half a cup of peino Romano W Catelli which again would be

Sicilian you know there wouldn’t be parmesan cheese in in this just it just wouldn’t it would never exist in a recipe like this okay if you’re doing it with the raisins which we’re going to talk about next so there’s 1/4 cup of raisins that are soaked in water if you

Don’t like them I’m just going to say right off the bat please just omit them okay but I do think you should try it maybe do a couple with the raisins if you’re a little apprehensive we also have a half a cup of parsley all this is

Just going to make a paste it’s going to go in there we’re going to tie it up you could toothpick it up or we can use string if you like all right let’s talk about the sauce sauce is going to be very simple it’s always going to be

Simple when you’re making Italian food I have olive oil just that’ll start our sauce we have medium onion that I diced and then five cloves of garlic that I minced 2 oz of tomato paste which is 1/3 of a can 3 28 Oz cans of plum tomatoes

These are all different types there’s a crush here it’s a good brand these are just atalian style peeled and then this is San Marzano here it doesn’t matter it’s going to be good it’s all going to be great because we’re cooking the brol in the sauce I have a little bit of

Water here if our sauce is too thick after the brazing process we can just thin it out with a little bit of water water you could also thin it out with a little bit more red wine so that leads me to this final ingredient red wine I

Have a cup here we’re going to use a half a cup for de glazing the brol and then we’re also going to use a half a cup for the sauce itself so it’s a cup here let’s get into faying this pounding it out rolling it and Searing it right

Now you can do this either way but if you want to just follow me exactly start making your sauce first all right we’re going to heat this up I have I have a dutch oven this is a 6q dutch oven oven heat it up to medium heat maybe a touch

Less than medium heat I have olive oil this is extra virgin but you can use regular olive oil too I’m just going to coat the bottom here okay that’s what we’re putting in we’re putting in a coat the bottom amount all right if you want to get specific the recipe says 1/4 cup

Here are our onions and I am using an enameled pot but you don’t have to you can just use your regular you know old school 8q sauce pot which is the typical pot that most people will have in their home just want to get get these onions

Soft so it’s going to take about 5 six 7 maybe 8 minutes I put a little pinch of salt on there just to accelerate the water release okay we’ll let these soften up first and then we’ll add our other stuff all right so while our onions are softening up let’s uh Crush

Our Tomatoes if you’re using all crushed tomatoes obviously you don’t need to do this I have um two that are whole tomatoes what I do here is I just fished a little piece of Basil I put out in the can just make sure your hands are clean

All right you can you can put gloves on if you want but you don’t need to and then all you do to to crush these is you just use a shield hand and then a crush hand The Shield hand is going to stop it from going all over your really nice

Shirt okay so the onions are nice and soft all right I really don’t want to put any color on them so just keep your heat fairly low and now here is the Garlic all right so I’m just letting this garlic just get nice and soft just

For about a minute or two till it gets fragrant and then here’s our tomato paste just 2 oz that’s it can can you not use tomato paste yeah of course you can but you know since we’re making Sicilian style food I don’t think you would ever not use paste right they use

The most paste of all of everybody that’s what I’ve heard I just always like to have a little paste in my sauce I I like it okay so what I’m doing is I’m just going to fry this paste up for about 3 4 minutes okay so here it is

After about 3 minutes looking nice smelling great I’m going to put in a half a cup of dry red wine what wine is this tired was it Mero CET this is a SRA SRA yeah so I’m going to use half of that right now we’ll save the other half

For deglazing after we uh sear up our brel if you can’t use wine just omit it just completely omit it I’m just going to turn that heat up a little bit and then you can just kind of clean the bottom of your pot with the flat edge of

A wooden spoon that’s why I always like this type of spoon okay it’s completely clear now let’s get all of our tomatoes in that’s one of the cans from before this is a crushed one Bonnie I love this one it’s just very good uh tomato uh value price-wise I don’t know the price

Because I we always get them locally but they’re they’re not bad on Amazon it’s in my Amazon shop the tomatoes all right look I want to show you because I didn’t Crush these These are the San Marzano ones so we’ll put them in hole see that huge basil leave this one

Right here this big thing I don’t want that in there so I’ll take it out if a little pit a little bit gets by it’s okay you could use your meat Masher here here now this is something I do think is worth it it’s only like six bucks and I

Use it for meat all the time but you can also just put all your plum tomatoes whole ones in here and just crush it with this if you don’t want to get your hands like Messy all right so I’m just going to bring this up to a simmer okay okay this is already thick very thick I can tell so I’m just going to put in my half a cup of water now if you think it’s thin for you just hold this off till later

Okay am I going to put in any carrots or baking soda or sugar no not I barely ever do number one we’re we’re making brol with raisins in it today which is already a lot of Sweetness in there you don’t need to do it but the fixation with always trying

To take acid out of this I think is uh overblown and not needed provided you’re using a quality tomato but we’ll taste it we’ll taste it after it cooks for a while what I want to do right now is bring this to a simmer okay and I’m

Going to do this over here so I can start preparing the brol just heat up the pan the recipe says medium heat that assum as you have the paste already I’m just going to heat it really low right now so I can just grate the paste over

Over this without it burning so I’m going to put olive oil on the bottom of the pan I don’t know how much I have here in the recipe what does IT say4 cup olive oil again again coat the top bottom type why am I looking at the

Recipe cuz I don’t want you to be like Jim you didn’t do the same thing in the in the video here that that’s in the recipe every video we make has a better recipe instructions and process shots on our website okay all right so this is really low here I’m

Just going to grate this garlic in and the reason I said I took five here is because I’m you know I don’t want to grate my fingers so I’m just going to stop after a certain point okay don’t worry it all gets stuck to the bottom and then you can just take it

All out okay I think that’s a good amount right there all right now I can turn the heat up a touch more to about medium heat but you got to be careful it will it will burn fast we just let this go for about a minute until it gets

Fragrant okay so nice and fragrant here’s the pine nuts it’s a/4 cup I’m just letting these go in the oil for about a minute or two okay so that’s how they look which you know is good you got to you’re not going to really burn these with the oil but

You do have to watch them just don’t have your heat too high here’s our breadcrumbs this is one cup of breadcrumbs we’re probably going to make more stuffing than we need but that’s kind of the nice thing about this you can you know say you want instead of 2

Lbs of beef you want to use 3 lb it’s it’s easy to do this is a little bit more than a half a cup so I think that’s good here’s the raisins I drain them okay you don’t have to take all the water out of

Them you can chop these if you want if you want smaller pieces of it okay just mix This Together turn off the heat okay heat’s off now just taking the back of my spoon and kind of breaking up any large clumps and then here’s the peino Romano that’s a

Half a cup grated which I you know I think we need a little bit more than that maybe a touch More so let’s mix this together let’s take taste it let’s get it right not adding any salt to this because we will season the beef itself and peino is quite salty I think I use too much uh breadcrumbs I’m just going to put a little bit more oil into just to try to

Stiffen it up a bit let’s pull this off and now we’re going to finally get to the point where we pound out the meat you’re going to have to pound it straight on the board anyway we’ll use plastic wrap but you can put your meat straight on your good board here’s the

Meat right here you can see it’s about this thick unless you have Superior knife skills way better than me maybe go initially like this all right I’m going to try to do it we’ll see how I do but there’s no way I’m going to be successful doing this the whole way all

Right so I’m taking my knife flat edge of my knife here and I’m going like this now your knife has to be very very Sharp so see like I’m opening it up like a book here but it already kind of disconnects here the meat itself so I don’t know how successful I’m going to be so these are this is a definitely the thicker side here so I will turn this

Into the little ones and just want to show you we’ll do a big one and we and we will do a little one set it up right next to your cutting board here like this and then you can pull here’s our meat just like that boom we are now

Going to pound the beef all right we’re just going to take this not the sharp side here this side Here okay I did a little bit more it’s this little tail here don’t worry we’ll use that for another piece this is what we have so basically if you want to like Square this up here this piece is probably going to break off anyway you can cut this little part

Off use it make a little one same thing here you can make a little one all right so what I’ll do is right about here will be there right about there so same thing I’ll just put plastic under here I’m going make it just a touch bigger and

Then we’ll do the little ones and then we’re going to do the rest of them it was one point .7 lb of top round London boil that I made really thin okay into all these thin pieces you could secure them with either string butcher string

Or two pics two picss are good for the smaller ones I prefer the smaller ones basically the bigger one is kind of when you’re making just brol but the smaller ones are like you add in with your meatballs your sausage in your massive pot of sauce stuffing put it in kind of like

The middle area it’s been about 20 minutes so stuffing is cool now so I kind of like leave at least a half an inch around the sides and you can put more if you want to like you don’t have to do a little bit for the bigger ones I

Can I’ll do more and again you know if you want bajo you put a nice uh slice of bajo there now and then to roll it it’s very simple just just roll it up tightly just like that three strings on this one okay one time around two time around and now my knot

Will hold it won’t go anywhere and then now I can just secure it with that I think I probably will need to use a couple more here this is a big one so like leave about that much I would say yeah yeah okay so these are really small

Ones now the meat like can you cut this a little bit do a little bit of surgery here you can if you have the meat you can just throw this right in your sauce a little piece of it which will be fine now I got two picks can go right

Through through again make them parallel to the piece to the length if you make them perpendicular they’re going to get in the way when you’re trying to sear it so you can do it either way you like all right I’m going to finish I have one

More large one and then I have uh two more small ones so a 2 lb piece of meat’s going to get you about 8 to 10 small ones or like three large ones our meat is right here these are all done these are all tied up ready to go I

Actually used a a little bit of the other pack that I had so add some more stuffing here’s our sauce right now so I had it simmering for about 45 minutes with the lid cracked you can see how this looks the consistency there a lot of water on top

Of here right now all right so I’m just going to stir it just keep stirring it occasionally and honestly if it’s too loose like this is very loose right now when you cook it you can just keep it cracked a tiny bit more more evaporation will occur that’s good just feel the

Bottom if you’re using an electric stone stove we could season up a little bit right now but you don’t need to go overboard and this is basically like just sauce we have right now there’s no meat has gone in it yet tastes delicious each brand of tomatoes has a little bit

Different sodium level so you always have to kind of test it you know if you follow a recipe and unless they tell you the brand it’s going to be different all right so I’m going to leave it more cracked now like this while I leave it

Over here while we sear the beef so when you heat up a stainless pan you got to let it heat up first heat it on medium heat and then when we put our oil down and then our brol it won’t stick if we don’t do that everything will stick we

Don’t want that all right let it heat up for 3 minutes I like to address these things on this channel I make mistakes you’re supposed to season the inside of the beef with salt and pepper before you put the stuffing in I didn’t do that I’m

Going to season the outside of the beef now to try to make amends but it won’t be as good all right we make mistakes here if you look at the ridden printable recipe you look at the site you will see me doing the seasoning maybe just season

The ones right now that you’re going to sear right away because they’re going to start releasing more moisture and you won’t get as good of a sear I’m going to put down a little bit of olive oil here if you don’t think you can use olive oil if you’re saying Jim

You’re making a cardal in here then use vegetable oil or whatever you want all Right we’re just going to sear these until they get brown how much per side maybe 2 minutes doesn’t really matter just get them Brown on most of the sides if my pants heated up properly these won’t stick if it’s heated up wrongly you’re not going to be able to get them

Off all right there you go okay yeah beautiful crust just turn it over okay same thing here oh yeah it’s hard to get every side as you got the TX in there but as long as you get like two sides nice you’re pretty good oh that stuck a tiny bit

Who okay right there yeah just let him go maybe turn it over a little bit more if you pan and then we will move on to the second batch okay see how black my Pan’s getting even with a 4 out of 10 okay these are seasoned up let’s get

Them right in there take the big one get it right into the center so we can fit in the pan and then the other one might need to touch more oil in here now listen these are going to be brazed for like an hour or two and the

Longer it Cooks the brol is also flavoring the sauce so the sauce will just taste better the longer it cook that’s the whole point of doing this this is why people put brol sausage meatballs pork neck bones this why they put everything in their sauce and let it

Cook for 12 14 hours it just makes this unbelievable tasting sauce that’s why you don’t put anything else in it you don’t take your spice cabinet and destroy your sauce the meat is the flavor of the sauce without the meat it would just be Tomatoes all right and

Yeah I’m just doing like a minute per side just keep I’ll just keep turning it as I go when you serve the big one you would like cut that into nice slices slices right we’re going to pull these out my pan is very dark um I’m just

Going to turn it off while I do this okay there they all are so listen here’s the remaining bit of wine so I don’t think I used a full half before here here’s probably more than half turn the heat up to High We de glaze the pan

Problem is that pan was very dark I’ve been showing this in multiple videos recently I’ve been showing it every time I’m doing this with meat say you did 10 B of brol and you your pan kept getting darker and darker it’s going to be burnt

You de glaze here this wine you taste it it will not taste good you don’t want to put it in your sauce so what I’m doing is I’m just using the flat edge of the spoon here and I’m just removing all of the brown bits okay turn it off I want

To taste this before I put this into my unbelievable sauce that I spent a lot of time making already sometimes it’s hard to detect the burtness when it’s very hot all right so you might want to let it cool down for a second I think it’s

Fine that’s going to go in the sauce now all right so pull this off here’s my sauce so now listen this is about an hour cooking you can see how this is thickened up somewhat all right there’s still some water on top so if it’s too

Thick at the end we’ll just put a little bit of water in here is that delicious deglazed uh that this is like the meat flavor so that’s in there now so now we have all the meat flavors um from the bottom of the pan that caramelization

When you put meat on the bottom of a stainless pan okay when it gets stuck the stuff starts changing the composition it starts tasting different all right so that’s actually that’s looking good but it’s going to thicken up more as we cook it now all we have to

Do is put our brol back in here with the juices and let it cook so yeah if you didn’t like the raisins you could have done some a few without and maybe like say like okay the raisin ones non- raisin ones will be tied and the other

Ones raisins will be two-p picked or or vice versa okay there’s the juices there’s the last frol got to make enough room oven in the middle let this cook for an hour and then check it for dness it can be done in an hour it’s you can taste it

If you like it that way you can let it go 2 hours sometimes I’ll let it go three it doesn’t really matter you don’t want to do it in your oven do it on your stove top very low heat occasionally open the lid and feel the bottom so your

Sauce isn’t burning if you put it in the oven it will not happen that’s the advantage of putting a dutch oven like this with a cover in the oven and that’s what I’m going to do we’ll be back in an hour to check this this is all fat you

See this all that right there so there’s a layer of this so even though this meat isn’t you know the fattiest meat there’s still plenty that’s coming out of here if we just use paper towel see this all this fat now is going into it and it’s fat that’s there okay that’s

Not sauce it’s like a tiny bit of sauce but it’s mostly fat going to put the cover back on and I’m going to cook it for another hour okay so here is after 2 hours and about 10 minutes the meat is really 10 tender there’s more grease

That I took out probably I don’t know maybe 30 minutes ago you can do one or two things here you can take all the meat out put it into a platter you can try to degrease it a little bit if you after you remove the meat if it’s too

Little liquidy for you just put this SS on a burner turn up the heat and then you can just thicken it to however you like if your sauce is too thick you can just add a touch of water a couple ounces until until you get it right or

You could even put some red wine in some dry red wine whatever you use be a little careful so it doesn’t break apart for the big ones especially and there you go that’s all of them just literally take your fork in there and rip it off you can leave this off to the

Side tent it but it’s going to stay hot for 40 minutes at least that is what we’re left with that’s fairly thick I have some pasta for James all I did here was I just took a little bit of my sauce you don’t want to boil pasta

And let it sit in a collander so I’ll put a little bit more of the sauce on there now remember you got a lot here so this is for the brol for bread and if you did a full pound of pasta you’re probably still going to have a little

Bit left over I say we serve all this up for the taste Tester we never have just brol and pasta whenever we do it it’s always with meatballs and sausage so this is a little on the worth of dox I think but I think it was probably the best way to show this recipe would you say so Tara

Or not yeah he can use a knife but it’s going to it’ll shred well at least we know the bread is good yeah I know which I the thing you no no I’m talking about the sauce the sauce the sauce the sauce the sauce make sure you season your sauce

With more salt and pepper at the end if it needs it how’s the meat you want more sauce is it good good a little bit more sauce on there yeah sure yeah everything’s very good it’s like a good way to make this meal like with the meat the bread and the

Pasta you want to after you stuff uh your face you want to say anything about it yeah I don’t know if people want to just watch you eat for like five minutes straight from how much I ate I think you can tell where this is going I gave the

Like we made shrimp and orzo earlier today two videos today I gave that a 10 I think this might be one of the first times I’ve ever given two 10 for videos in a day but I’m I’m giving this 10 too nice I wasn’t expecting that I thought

These are so like these dishes both of them are so good I thought because he gave the 10 on the orzo one which I don’t know which one will be out for you when you’re watching this first they’re completely different because this is like this is like a 5H hour cook cooking

Process from like preparing it your sauce the brol and cooking in the oven versus the shrimp and Oro like 30 minutes so James what did you like about the brel do you taste anything inside of it you get any sweetness from anything in there I taste raisins pine

Nuts it’s very good it’s one of my favorite things yeah it’s one of my favorite things too it’s a little bit more labor than just throwing sausages and into a pot all right James any anything else you want to say before we get out of here amazing dish thanks

Buddy all right there you have it 210 on what’s today’s date that this happened what was this magical date President’s Day I got 21 he feels like the president that’s right that was a corny joke that was a dad joke that was cringe no anybody who uses the word

Cringe I automatically don’t worry about what they say when somebody tells me I’m cringe for walking through the door I’m just like the only thing cringe is you’re you you look older than me and you’re using that word you know that’s what I say don’t laugh at me it’s not

Cringe your entrance is cringe it’s cringe yeah