This Gluten Free Bracciole Recipe was a joint effort. I had the pleasure of asking my mother to work with me one time to show me how to make bracciole. It was a lot of fun working in the kitchen together again. My queen of a Mother is 81 and was willing to show me how to make this Italian Classic.
What exactly is Gluten Free Bracciole
Bracciole is naturally gluten free. I am sure someone somewhere decided to dredge this in flour once, but the original Italian recipe is quite simple. Long, thinly sliced flank steak is filled with parsley, garlic and parmigiano reggiano. It is rolled up and tied with kitchen string and seared in olive oil, before it cooks low and slow on the back burner in passata.
Bracciole is served with salad or pasta. My father loves it with Lasagna. We did not have it often. It was probably both expensive and labor intensive for a family of five. We could smell it as we came through the door after school and we knew we were lucky.
Italian Food is Love in Action
Gluten Free Bracciole is an act of love I want to share with my family. Since it was a labor intensive meal, I never got to see it being made from beginning to end. So I asked my very generous mother to show me from start to finish so I could share it at home and with others. This blog article is our joint creation.
Growing up in an Italian American household with Celiacs Disease was not easy. Bracciole was something that was cooked in the pot with the sauce to add flavor to the sauce and to tenderize the flank steak. It often was included in the pot with meatballs and sausage as well. It is traditionally served with pasta. If you want gluten free bracciole, the meatballs and the sausage would need to be gluten free.
This recipe is made specifically to be gluten free bracciole, so no meatballs, no sausage (some sausage has bread crumbs) and nothing that would do any damage to a celiac. It was made with love, and it was delicious. My father and brother were ecstatic.
Gluten Free Bracciole without Tomato?
Having so many issues, I told my mother I think I would take this and cook it in mushrooms with a mushroom sauce (imagine those mushrooms in truffle oil.. ooooh). I would be destroying the recipe, but tomato sauce doesn’t like me very much and my galactosemia has no problem with mushrooms.
If you are truly interested in Authentic Italian food, I would like to recommend my favorite Italian Chef Vincenzo online. You can find Vincenzo and his videos on YouTube. He painstakingly explains the proper way of cooking the most amazing recipes. No shortcuts. Just wonderful Recipes. He also has a website, but I personally find his videos very educational.
Gluten Free Bracciole
Equipment
- 1 cutting board
- 1 platter
- 1 saute/sauce pan
Ingredients
- 6 2 oz flank steaks thinly sliced
- 1/2 cup parsley chopped
- 5 med garlic cloves minced
- 3 ounces parmigiano reggiano grated
- 1 dash italian seasoning
- 6 dashes salt
- 6 dashes pepper
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 24 ounces tomato sauce passata
Instructions
- Get three pieces of cooking yarn and one thin slice of flank steak. Place them on your cuttiing board with the string under the flank steak.
- Sprinkle 1/6 of the chopped parsley onto the flank steak.
- Sprinkle 1/6 of the minced garlic onto the flank steak.
- sprinkle 1/6 of the parmegiano Reggiano over the top of the flank steak
- Sprinkle a dash of italian seasoning over the surface of the flank steak.
- Roll The Bracciole the long way.
- Tie the Bracciole with the three pieces of string
- Place the tied Bracciole on the platter.
- Repeat the process for the remaining 5 slices of flank steak.
- Take your pan, add the olive oil, and heat the pan - Med-Med High depending on your stove.
- Carefully add the rolled, tied Bracciole to the pan.
- Allow the Bracciole to cook in the oil, turning as it gets a sear to the exterior
- Once the Bracciole is beautifully seared, remove half of the olive oil from the pan. Add the Tomato Sauce and sprinkle the herbs. Cover and cook low and slow until the Bracciole gets tender about 1.5 to 2 hours.
