CHICAGO STYLE ITALIAN BEEF SANDWICH (Made By Man From Chicago)

Hey , what's up today ?

I'm gonna show you how to make classic Chicago style Italian beef sandwiches from scratch .

We're gonna make the jar , the bread , the beef and of course , the to get started , I need to make the spicy oily pickled vegetable known as jardine for that .

I've got cauliflower celery , green bell peppers , Serrano , chilies and baby carrots .

Now , I'm gonna throw a small dice into all five of these veggies .

I've got 100 and 50 g of each of them .

With the exception of these Serranos , I've got just 75 g of those and beware , these are really spicy .

Feel free to either use less of them or use jalapeno in their place , which are less spicy and use gloves to keep the heat off your hands and your wiener .

Once all these veggies are chopped into a small dice , I'm gonna toss everything in this bowl to combine in total .

This should yield about one full quart or a full liter of finished jar over at the stove .

I've got my pickling liquid for this .

Coming up to a boil .

That's 400 g of white , stilled vinegar .

200 g of water .

And 24 g of salt .

Once that's all at a rolling boil in , goes the chopped veggies .

I'm gonna turn off the heat and let this mixture cook as it cools down to about room temperature .

The pickle brine here is really quite salty and quite sour too much for a regular pickle , for sure .

But these are gonna be bathed in oil later on .

So we need intensity in the veg to cut through all that fat .

Once this is cooled off into a core container , it goes .

And from there , I'm gonna let this jar continue to pickle and become acidified in the fridge for two whole days .

Up .

Next is the bread part of this sandwich .

This is some grocery store stuff that was labeled as French rolls .

They aren't that great .

Honestly get something from a proper bakery if you can .

The problem with this grocery store stuff is that it's kind of brittle .

It's definitely not strong enough to hold the wetness of this sandwich and it's dry , we can do better for sure .

So to make proper French rolls for this beef sandwich , I'm gonna grab my stand mixer and into the bowl of that .

I'm gonna measure 225 g of warm water , nine g of yeast , 20 g of olive oil , 15 g of sugar .

350 g of strong bread , flour and nine g of salt .

The dough hook goes on and now I'm gonna mix this on low speed just until things come together for about three minutes .

When the dough is clumped up into a mass like this , I'm gonna turn the mixer up to high speed and mix for an additional six minutes more .

This dough is gonna need all of that time in the bowl .

Part of what allows the sandwich rolls they use in Chicago to stand up to all that beef stew is a well developed strong gluten network that has a really good chew to it .

After nine minutes total of mixing this dough is super strong and does not tear at all .

When we give it a hard tug like this into the bowl , it goes , the lid goes on and now I'm gonna let this ferment on the counter for 90 minutes .

After that 90 minutes , this dough has grown by quite a bit .

But you will notice that we did not do any strength building folds during the fermentation here .

So it's gonna deflate a little bit when we that lid and that's totally fine .

We're gonna be adding a lot more strength right now to start shaping .

I'm gonna flour my dough , then the board and then I'm gonna divide these into two equal size pieces that are roughly 300 g a piece from there .

I'm gonna pre shape these into nice taught round balls .

And if you aren't familiar pre shaping , both brings needed structure to the dough before we turn it into a final loaf shape .

And it also gives us uniform pieces to use as a starting point in the shaping process .

Once these are rounded off , they're gonna get covered with a tea towel .

And I'm gonna let them rest here for 15 minutes after that 15 minutes .

Now it's time to shape to do that .

I'm gonna flip one of these out of the way and then I'm gonna flip the other one on its back .

And now I'm gonna shape these like a baguette start by pulling out the dough on each side to get a wide rectangle .

Now , working from the bottom up , I'm gonna roll this dough into a tight little cylinder thing by rolling it forward and pulling back once it's rolled up into a nice to tube .

Next , I'm gonna come back with my fingertips and thumbs in a triangle shape and then use those to roll this into a longer wider piece of dough .

Now , I'm gonna flatten the ends real quick and repeat that for dough ball too .

And then I'm going to grab a sheet tray with some parchment paper .

I'll hit that with a generous dose of cornmeal or semolina flour .

And finally , I'm going to give these tubes one final rollout to make sure that they're proper sandwich length and width .

Oh , yeah .

And I'm also going to smush these down real quick to make sure that they actually are a little bit wider than they are tall .

This is going to give us a much more sandwich friendly shape of bread .

Now , I'm going to cover this with a sheet tray and let it proof here on the counter for 30 to 45 minutes depending on the temperature of your house .

45 minutes later , when I look back at these , they're all proofed up and they've grown in size by about 70 5% or so .

Now I'm gonna score these with my bread razor here real quick .

Tip to tip B B next , I'm gonna load these into a preheated 375 degree Fahrenheit oven or 1 90 C and bake for about 30 minutes .

Baking bread at such low temperature is new territory for me .

I'm usually all about that thick chewy crust , but since this style of bread has almost equal parts crust to crumb .

Having a thick rusted crust actually means torn up mouths and hard to eat sandwiches .

So lower temps allow that crust to set up slower and it becomes a thinner , more sandwich friendly texture .

After that .

30 minutes take a look .

I'm just delighted how these turned out .

They have a great shape .

They've got a thin tender crust , corn meal on the bottom .

You guys , it's gonna be a perfect vehicle for the absolute slop , fest of Italian beef that is coming our way .

Speaking of beef , here we go for the sandwich .

I've chosen to go with a respectable lean roast of meat called top round roast .

This is from the sirloin .

It has a little bit more fat than just straight up rump roast .

But anything from the back end of the cow should work fine as long as it has some intramuscular fat .

I've got £22 roast here , £1 for each sandwich roll .

These will shrink a lot .

So , don't be scared if you're like , ok , I need a pound of meat over at the stove .

I've got my large dutch oven , preheating and into that .

I'm gonna add 3 to 4 glug of neutral high temp cooking oil .

And then I'm gonna add in two roasts at a time .

No salt , no pepper .

We're mainly adding these in to get some brown beef stuff on the bottom of the pot .

That's gonna be great for fortifying the beef shou which if you don't know , beef shoe is like the crux of this sandwich and making it as intensely beefy as possible is a serious priority at some point .

I'm gonna rotate in the second two pieces of beef and don't worry if the Sears on the outside of this aren't perfect .

It's all about the , not the exterior of the meat .

Once the bottom of my pot is well coated in seared beef fond , I'm gonna delay this thing with 1000 g of roughly one quart of really nice beef stock .

If you've got it , if you don't got it , we're gonna make some right now or if you don't want to , we can definitely cheat this later on .

In my opinion .

Great beef stock comes from beef shanks because shanks have tons of connective tissue and tons of beef flavor .

That's all the stuff that we want here .

I've roast about 6 to £8 of beef shanks in a really hot oven for about 30 minutes until they are very , very golden brown .

Just like these ones now to make these in a stock , I'm gonna grab my instant pot and use it like a slow cooker .

In my opinion , doing this on the countertop is a lot easier and more passive than doing it on top of the stove top where there's flames and stuff .

Now I'm gonna put these shanks into my instant pot and then add some water onto the sheet tray to scrape up all that roasty brown stuff that's super valuable .

And once everything's in there , I'm gonna add two kg or liters or two quarts of water and slow cook .

Not pressure cook this for six hours .

No veg no herbs , just beef .

Six hours later .

As you can see this stuff looks beautiful .

It's dark and beefy .

It's sticky and everything we need for insane beef sandwich shoot .

So once that's in my beef pot , now I'm gonna add in my top secret Italian beef spice mix , which is not a secret at all .

Actually , it's five g each of dried oregano , garlic powder , onion powder .

Toasted coriander seed , chili flake , paprika , toasted benel seed and black pepper , shake it all up and there we go .

Brian's super secret Chicago style beef spice available west of 290 in Lombard in Chicago land now into the pot that spice blend goes .

And as you can see , I've nestled all four beef chunks into this stock .

And once that's up to a simmer , I'm gonna top this with a cut out piece of parchment paper to keep this beef from drying out .

And then I'm gonna load this whole thing into a preheated 250 degree Fahrenheit 1 20 C oven and cook for about 60 minutes after that 60 minutes .

It's time to check on the beef .

Essentially .

We have just made wet roasted beef .

Yeah , that sounds pretty weird .

But that's how they do it in the beef shops .

These guys are not like classically trained French chefs .

They make sandwiches and they do what works .

Now to check , done this , I'm gonna grab my instant re thermometer and see where it's at .

We're at about 100 and 45 F .

That's gonna coast up to a slightly higher temp as it cools .

Next .

I'm gonna steal a move from the catering world and wrap these beefs with plastic wrap while they are still warm and then throw them in the refrigerator to rest and cool .

At the same time , the plastic wrap helps keep the moisture from evaporating off the meat and kind of seals in the juices .

Literally props to Ethan Lowy fellow youtuber and culinary bad boy for reminding me that this was an option .

But if you're weird about plastic , don't worry about it , just skip that and cool down the beef in the juice .

As for the Jew , we're gonna strain that off , get all the spices out of there and then cool that down with the beef until we're ready to eat the beef .

While that cools .

Let's finish the jardin real quick .

This stuff been pickling in the fridge for two days now and it's time to finish it off .

I'm gonna drain off all of this super sour , super salty pickle brine and replace it with 300 g of neutral oil .

I'm using a light colored olive oil and then 100 and 50 g of regular extra virgin olive oil .

I'm gonna give that a stir to combine and there we have it handmade jar .

This stuff gets better as it marinates in the fridge , it kind of becomes something else .

It unifies into something really special .

But if you don't have time or interest to make this yourself , there should be something store bought available like this that is still very great .

It's less intense for sure and a little less fun .

But as far as store bought foods go nothing to stick your nose up at here .

I can definitely recommend store bought Jared back to the beef .

We've arrived at the main dilemma of a good Chicago beef .

How do you slice it ?

Tissue paper , thin hand slicing is definitely a possibility and not a bad option .

If it's your only option and you own a sharp knife , you won't get tissue paper thin slices .

But if you don't overcook it in the Jew later , it will be tender and tasty and probably worth your time .

Option two is to not roast the beef yourself .

But instead opt to buy very thinly sliced roast beef from the grocery store .

And when I say very thinly sliced , I mean shaved , basically buy the stuff as thin as they can possibly get it .

But the dilemma here with buying roast beef is that we do not have delicious Jew from the cooking process .

So we will need to cheat the system a little bit to do that .

Take one quart of strong beef stock add in the secret spice blend and then a few tablespoons of beef boon paste .

That's right .

I endorsed it for this recipe because I guarantee that most if not all of the beef shops in Chicago use some form of concentrated beef paste to season their Jew as a chef , you have to trust me that the economics of making Jew from bones at scale in a beef restaurant just doesn't make sense .

At loafers .

We made our beef Jew with beef shanks as you will see in this video and the Italian beef sandwich even at $14 did not really make us any money .

So using beef bullion is OK .

In my book , I recommend the paste like this better than boon product .

As you can see , the powdered stuff tends to taste a little bit like beef ramen , which is not great , in my opinion .

Once that's all simmered together for about 30 minutes , I'm gonna straight off the spices and then bring it back to 100 and 40 F .

And then I'm gonna dunk in that store , bought beef .

At this point .

The beef is gently gonna cook in that 140 degrees beef shoe and there you go , tender sloppy , good but not great .

Chicago style beef .

The final option , the best option in the one that I've gone for in this video is using a deli slicer to slice the stuff that we just cooked in the tissue paper , thin slices because of my job .

I have access to a meat slicer .

So it's kind of like cheating .

You guys probably won't be able to do this .

But once I've got this stuff sliced , I'll get it back to my house and I'm gonna get my juice set up to finish off this sandwich .

We're gonna do this pretty similar to how we just did it a second ago .

And then my sauce pan goes the jew .

I cook the beef in .

Then I to sneak in a spoonful of that better than boon paste that I was just telling you about .

Trust me , the pros are super charging even the best beef shoes with this stuff .

At least I think , let me know in the comments .

If I'm wrong over at the stove , we're gonna taste this for seasoning again .

This stuff needs to be very salty .

It is not soup , it should be very intense and you should not really be able to comfortably drink more than a few tablespoons of this stuff at a time once that season and up to temperature , in this case , 100 and 45 F or 62 C , I'm gonna turn the heat to its lowest setting to maintain .

And then I'm gonna add in all my beef .

I'm putting about 8 to 10 ounces per sandwich a lot basically .

And then after about 30 seconds or so of bathing in nice salty beef shoe , that meat should be ready to go .

It's thin and just a little rosy in some spots and just looks super perfect bread wise .

No need to toast or warm up .

What we made earlier .

Room temp is actually preferred .

I'm just gonna cut this in half and then lop off the ends and cut it in half to open it up as far as the build of this sandwich goes , I'm gonna show you how I do it .

But there are a lot of ways to play here .

A lot of things look like success basically for me , I the beef out of the jew and then drip it liberally all over the bread and repeat .

I think this would technically be called wet .

I go out of my way to get a bunch of juice on the bread but still leaves some areas untouched and dry once that's loaded up with beef .

Next goes on the jar and I layer it on super thick .

This is probably my favorite part of the sandwich and I top the whole thing with additional jew just to make sure that it's the right amount of wet from here .

Some people add roasted sweet bell peppers , which in most beef places means overcooked , sauteed green bell pepper .

Those are not really my favorites .

Also , those were not really an option at the suburban places I grew up beefing at when I was young and they aren't my truth but feel free to throw sweet peps on your beef .

Finally to bring this to a pro level .

This sandwich needs to be wrapped tightly with parchment paper .

This move alone forms the whole thing from a mess into a nice tight package that you can actually call the sandwich and it's 75% less likely to fall apart when you eat it .

And you can see when you cut into this parchment , all of that hard work has finally paid off .

We've got a tight well built sandwich that hits all the details we want and honestly looks like something straight out of a paper bag from Johnny's or Al's beef .

And if you want to be an absolute psycho about it , dip this entire sandwich into that Jew .

A lot of Chicago people go for that .

It basically makes the bread into paste and it's no longer a sandwich .

It's not for me , but the world is yours .

Basically .

Now you have the tools to make a real deal .

Italian Chicago beef in your home .

I really hope you give it a try .

Let's eat this thing .

Mother , before I get out of here .

A huge thank you to everybody who supports this channel on Kofi .

If you guys aren't familiar with Kofi , the link will be down in the description .

It's a great way to support what I'm doing here on the channel .

As always guys .

Thank you so much for your time and attention .

Thank you for sticking around to the end and we'll see you next time .