Home › A Calendar of Dinners › Stuffed Flank Steak
Stuffed Flank Steak
Buy a flank steak. Fry 2 tablespoons chopped onion in a 1/4 cup Crisco. Add 1/2 cup soft, stale breadcrumbs, 1/4 teaspoon mixed herbs, salt and pepper to taste. Spread over steak, roll and tie. Brown in 3 tablespoons Crisco, and remove to casserole or covered dish. To the Crisco in pan add an equal quantity of flour, and brown, then add 1 cup stock or boiling water, and 1 cup strained tomato, season with salt and pepper, pour over the roll, cover dish, and cook slowly until meat is tender. If cooked in casserole it may be served in same dish.
A straightforward braised beef roll that only needs three things translated: the fat, the vessel, and the vagueness of "cook slowly until tender."
- The hinge: low and longFlank is lean and coarse-grained, so it turns tender only after its connective tissue melts. Hold the covered dish at a bare simmer, or in a 300-325F oven, for 1.5 to 2.5 hours depending on thickness. A hard boil will squeeze it dry and stringy no matter how long you go.
- CriscoThe book was written to sell it, hence the shortening in every step. Any neutral oil, butter, or beef drippings works in the same amounts; use oil or drippings for the browning, since butter will scorch at searing heat.
- Buying the steakThe original assumes a butcher hands you one whole flank, roughly 1.5 to 2 lb. Ask for it butterflied, or split it horizontally yourself and pound it to an even half-inch so it rolls without a thick core.
- Soft stale breadcrumbsNot dried crumbs from a canister. Tear day-old bread with the crust off and rub it into loose crumbs; it should absorb the onion fat and stay moist rather than sanding the filling.
- Mixed herbsUsually some combination of dried herbs such as thyme, marjoram, savory and sage; the exact blend varied. A quarter teaspoon of dried thyme with a pinch of sage gets you there.
- Tying the rollRoll with the grain running the length of the roll, and tie at 1-inch intervals with kitchen twine. Tucking the ends in keeps the stuffing from washing out into the sauce.
- The equal quantity of flourThree tablespoons of fat means three tablespoons of flour. Cook it until it smells nutty and turns the color of a paper bag before the liquid goes in, or the gravy tastes raw and pasty.
- Strained tomatoTomatoes cooked down and pushed through a sieve, fresh or canned. A cup of canned tomato puree or passata is the nearest equivalent, though thinner strained tomato is closer still; crushed tomatoes will give a chunkier sauce.
- Yield and carvingProbably enough for about four. Rest the roll ten minutes, snip the twine, and cut in 3/4-inch slices straight across so each round shows the spiral of stuffing.
The book is A Calendar of Dinners, one of the recipe collections Procter & Gamble commissioned to teach American cooks what to do with Crisco after the hydrogenated shortening reached the market in 1911; the constant, cheerful naming of the brand in every step is advertising copy as much as instruction. The dish itself is thrift cookery of a very old kind: flank is a hardworking muscle, cheap and thin, and stuffing, rolling, and braising it is a familiar way of making a small quantity of tough beef stretch to a family dinner. Rolled stuffed beef of this shape turns up across Europe under many names, from Italian involtini and German Rouladen to the English "beef olives," and American cookbooks of the period carried versions under headings such as "stuffed flank steak."