Sparks from the Kitchen

These are delicious! The beef is cooked all day and just falls apart. The very slightly hot peppers, the melty provolone cheese and the tomatoes makes this one tasty hot sandwich. Save some of the juice for dipping if you’d like.  This cooks for 8 hours which makes it ideal for a weeknight dinner also as it can stay on ‘warm’ for a while after cooking.

I put the roast in my slow cooker at about 10am on New Year’s Day. I didn’t really have any plans for the day except catching up on some DVR’d shows and doing some chores around the house and laundry but on a lazy day off it was nice to not have to worry about dinner and have such a delicious sandwich waiting for me.  It also reheats really well. I brought some left-overs to work the next day, put the roll in the toaster oven with a slice of cheese and nuked the beef. It was delicious!

Italian Beef Sandwiches-Slow Cooker

Ingredients:

• 1 3lb eye round roast (or chuck or rump)
• 1 2oz packet Italian Dressing mix (dry)
• 6 small Pepperoncini peppers
• 1 cup low sodium low fat beef broth
• 1 14.5 oz can Muir Glen Organic diced tomatoes w/italian herbs
• Sliced provolone cheese
• Butter
• Rolls

Instructions:

1. Put the roast into the cooker.
2. In a bowl combine the dressing mix and broth and stir to combine.
3. Pour the mix over the roast followed by the tomatoes.  Place the peppers into the broth around the roast.
4. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.
5. When the cooking is complete remove any pieces of fat from the beef or liquid and discard.
6. Remove the roast from the liquid and set aside. Strain the liquid to remove any fat that may be left. Retain the strained liquid and tomatoes.
7. Slice the rolls in half the long way.
8. Heat a pan over medium/high heat. Melt a tbsp of butter and when foaming place the halves of as many rolls as can fit into the butter (interior side down). Weigh down with something (I used my tea pot) and cook until crisp. Remove from the pan and place provolone onto the bread and then top with some beef and tomatoes and cooking liquid if you’d like.
9. Serve immediately.

As an alternate serve the cooking liquid in a small bowl along side the sandwich for dipping.

Adapted from thecountrycook.net