Outside the Box: Smoked Italian Beef

This past weekend was our last tailgate of the season and I wanted to do something special.  Also, since it was the weekend after Thanksgiving, I knew I didn't want a poultry product as well.  So, I thought a bit and did some searching.  What I came up with was an Italian Beef Sandwich where I just lightly smoked the beef.

I used this recipe from Amazing Ribs.  Yeah, I know, a rib website for a beef recipe?  You should stop over there.  They have some great recipes for ribs and lots of other good things.  What did I change?  Nothing, other than I lightly smoked the beef with some oak while roasting.  How did it turn out?  Well, on to the details...

First, I found a 6 lb eye of beef round on sale at our local grocery.  As you can see, not much fat on this piece of beef...

The fat was only on one side, so I trimmed it off and cleaned the silver skin off of the back side.  Here is the finished product...

I made a double batch of the rub since the meat was twice the size called for in the recipe and rubbed all over...

I fired up the smoker and brought to a temperature of 350 F and added 2 small chunks of oak into the ash pan.  Then, I put the eye of round on the third rack down...

I flipped after one hour to get an even brown all over, then pulled at an internal temp of 135 F, wrapped in foil and let sit on the counter for two hours to cool...

The smell drifting out of the foil was intoxicating.  Even more so after opening the foil to slice...

Then, we cut in half to slice...

Finished product...

Perfect medium rare on the small side, perfect rare on the thick side.  A nice light smoky flavor, just a hit of oak.  I was tempted to make a sandwich then, but I settled for generous quality sampling.

I sauteed some green peppers...

And caramelized some sweet onion...

And made some beef broth for dipping sauce.  The caramelized onions go into the broth for serving...

Sorry, I didn't get any pictures of the end product at the tailgate.  But, you heat up the broth/onion mixture and add the beef slices to re-heat.  The beef gets piled high on crusty Italian rolls.  Traditional toppings are the sauteed green peppers or hot gardenia.  The masses loved it!

The next day, I topped with caramelized onion and provolone cheese and baked until the cheese was bubbly, then topped with horsey sauce.  If I had a kimmelweck roll, it would have been perfect for sure.

One more tidbit that I noticed.  The leftover broth that was used for heating the beef slices and as an Au  Jus for dipping the sandwiches had a wonderful flavor.  Lots of caramelized onions with a beefy, slightly smoky flavor.  It would have made an outstanding French Onion Soup with the addition of some spice, some croutons, and baked with a piece of provolone on top.  I will give that a try the next time I make this and I will definitely be making this again!

Thanks for stopping by...

Bill