September 28, 2026

Braciole Dinner

Dinner tonight was a Braciole for the main course, along with a salad plus Thousand Island Dressing.

It started in the afternoon with preparing with meat. I began with a 1.75 pound flank steak.

I laid it out on top of two sheets of cling wrap, then started the job of pounding it flat with a meat mallet. This was grueling work. At first it seemed like the meat wasn’t moving at all, and I was getting nowhere. I took a few breaks and came back to it a bunch of times over the course of an hour or so, in between meetings and stuff. Eventually I got it to where I thought it was workable.

At some point during the process I googled for tips on flattening a flank steak. Most people on the internet agreed that the best way is to butterfly it, which of course I was too late for. I think in the end what helped me was:

• Cutting away some of the silverskin on each side of the meat. I used the tip of a knife to get under it and and then pulled it up. Some came right off, but what was left was broken enough to (I think) help the meat move
• Letting it come to room temperature. I should have realized this earlier, but the flattening process got easier and easier the warmer the steak got

So with a flattened steak, it was time to food-process the filling and spread it over the meat. For this I used some gluten free seasoned croutons, which are indistinguishable from gluten-full ones.

Then it was time to roll and tie it. That was cool because this is a process I’ve never done before. It took a couple tries to get the “looping” right, but after I got the motion down, it was pretty easy.

After that I browned all sides of the braciole in a cast iron pan. I needed to bend it a little because the roll was a bit longer than the 12 inch pan could handle.

Once it was browned, I put it into the pan with some store-bought marinara (not tomato sauce) that had been heating in the oven. I tented the pan with foil and popped it into the oven at 350 degrees. I then turned my attention to making the salad dressing.

This couldn’t have been easier, it was just one step: “mix everything together in a bowl”. I halved this recipe because I couldn’t see us needing 2 cups of salad dressing any time soon. Once it was all mixed I put it into a jar for serving.

An hour after I put the braciole in the oven, I dropped the temp down to 325 and gave it one more half hour. When I took the meat out of the oven, I moved it onto a cutting board and let it cool for about 10 minutes before cutting it.

I have to say this one was a hit. Everyone in the family loved it, and everyone had seconds. The meat was so tender, and the filling was absolutely delicious. But an unexpected star was the sauce – having cooked the sauce for so long resulted in it being thick and caramelized, and just full of concentrated flavor. It paired with the braciole so well. The salad dressing was alright – it’s a decent low-calorie alternative to normal thousand island – bit the beef was a winner.

Braciole

• Crowd: 5/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Would try butterflying the meat next time to speed up the thinning process
• Cooked at 350 for one hour, then 325 for 30m
• Used a 24oz jar of store bought marinara sauce
• Next time would love to try cooking at 300 for 3 hours

Thousand Island Dressing

• Crowd: 3/5
• Ease: 3/5
• Used half as much mustard powder