The Great American Slow Cooker Book (33 page)

1
Lay a flank steak on your cutting board; insert the tip of your knife into the middle of the thickest side, then slice to the outside edge. Repeat on the other side to the opposite outside edge. Keep doing this until you can open the steak up flat; do not cut through the back, but instead leave it securely attached, like a book binding. Cover the steak with wax paper; use the smooth side of a meat mallet or the bottom of a heavy saucepan to pound the opened steak to ¼-inch thickness, starting at the middle and working your way out to the edges. Repeat with any other steaks as necessary.

2
Drizzle the steaks with the vinegar, garlic, thyme, and salt. Make a layer of spinach leaves across the cut surface, then top with the shallots before sprinkling with the pine nuts and red pepper flakes. (Apportion these stuffing ingredients evenly if you’re working with more than one steak.)

3
Roll up the steak into a spiraled log, like a jelly roll. Tie the roll closed with butchers’ twine in three or four places along its length.

4
Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Swirl in the oil, then add one of the tied-up steaks. Brown it all around for a couple minutes, then turn it slightly to continue browning more surface area. Set aside and continue browning more steaks as necessary.

5
Set the steaks in the slow cooker, then pour in the broth. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours, or until each steak is quite tender when pierced. Use a wide metal spatula to transfer the steak to a cutting board; let stand for 10 minutes. Slice into ½-inch-thick rounds.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
This recipe is a little over the top, sure, but it also brings out the best in the cut, rendering the meat luxuriously flavorful.

•
Flank steaks range from 1 to 2 pounds. If you’re working with a large cooker, buy two 1½-pound flank steaks and wedge them side by side into the cooker. If they won’t fit, you’ll need to stack them, then reverse them halfway through the cooking so they both get time in the liquid.

•
If you really want to go all out, cover the cut surface of the steak with thin slices of prosciutto before adding the spinach leaves and rolling them up. You can even add thin slices of provolone! (If you do, cut the spinach by about half so the steak is still easy to roll closed.)

•
The cooking time is conservative because you want the meat to have some chew, the better to be able to slice these rolls into rounds.

•
Pine nuts can be crazy-expensive if you buy them in those little jars. Instead, look for them in bulk or at least in larger quantities with the other nuts or in the produce section.

SHORTCUTS
Ask your market’s butcher to butterfly and pound the steaks for you, then skip step 1. The flank steak is a fairly fatty bit taken from the underside of the cow toward the back. Sometimes called the “bavette,” it’s also one of the tougher cuts of beef—and thus, long braising in a slow cooker comes to the rescue!

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
The trick to proper browning in a skillet is quite simple: you have to leave the meat alone until its surface crusts and even dries out a bit. After that, the meat can pop off the hot surface with a gentle prod from a spatula. If you find that pieces of meat are tearing as you try to turn them, you haven’t let them brown enough.

1
Whisk the broth, sherry, tomato paste, and soy sauce in the slow cooker until the tomato paste dissolves. Stir in the onions, olives, and peppercorns. Submerge the pieces of steak in the sauce.

2
Cover and cook on low for 7 hours, or until the steak is fork-tender. Transfer the beef to a cutting board; cool for 10 minutes. Slice the steaks into thin strips widthwise, then serve in bowls with the sauce ladled on top.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
A fine dish for a dinner party, this hearty stew offers great contrasting flavors, particularly if you take extra care to slice the olives thin so you can get one in every bite.

•
Skirt steaks do have a little fat on their external surfaces, but you needn’t trim it off. The steaks themselves are quite
lean; any extra fat will only enhance their already mild flavor.

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
Green peppercorns are black peppercorns that have not been dried. The green version has a brighter and more acidic, if slightly muskier, flavor than its black and red counterparts.

Serve It Up!
Because the sauce skews to the sour, serve this dish with a somewhat sweeter side, like a rice or barley pilaf stocked with vegetables.

1
Set the brisket in the slow cooker. (If you can’t fit the cut without folding, slice the brisket in half and set one piece on top of the other.)

2
Whisk the tomato puree, tomato paste, vinegar, brown sugar, paprika, Worcestershire sauce, allspice, cloves, coriander, celery seeds, mustard, pepper, garlic powder, and salt in a large bowl; pour over the brisket.

3
Cover and cook on low for 10 hours in a small cooker, 11 hours in a medium cooker, or 12 hours in a large cooker, or until the brisket is tender enough to slice without shredding. If you’ve stacked two pieces of brisket, you’ll need to swap them halfway through cooking to make sure each piece spends time submerged in the sauce.

4
Transfer the meat to a cutting board and let stand for 10 minutes before slicing against the grain into ¼-inch-thick strips. Skim some of the fat from the sauce with a spoon before serving it on the side.

TESTERS’ NOTES

•
Here’s an all-American slow cooker version of the American backyard favorite, given more oomph here with a homemade barbecue sauce. No, the meat’s not truly
barbecued
. Let go of the culinary jargon; the flavors are the same.

•
The sweet-and-savory barbecue sauce will set off the tender beef perfectly. Consider making a double batch of the sauce; save the remainder in a covered plastic or glass container in the freezer for up to 4 months, a boon for your next backyard cookout—or slow cooker brisket!

INGREDIENTS EXPLAINED
Cut from the cow’s breast, a brisket is a rather stringy cut that tenderizes beautifully after long cooking with moist heat. When butchered into smaller, more manageable pieces, the leanest section is called the
first cut
or the
flat cut
. The first cut does have a layer of fat on top of the meat. We suggest trimming the fat, but leave it in place for a richer dinner.

ALL-AMERICAN KNOW-HOW
For both tenderness and flavor, beef should be sliced “against the grain”—that is, with the most fibers exposed in each slice so that the pieces hold together, rather than turn to shards. In American butchering technique, the fibers always run through the cuts (not along their surface planes, as in European butchering). When it comes to brisket, you can see the fibers on the outside of the cut. Slice ninety degrees to their direction (that is, not with their direction but perpendicular to—or
against
—it).

For other cuts, you may need to run your fingers along the surface to tell which way the fibers are running, pulling the meat slightly apart to see what’s what. And once in a great while, it’s pure trial and error: slice a small piece off the end of the meat and look at the fibers inside.