Pellet Smoker Cooking: Italian Beef Sandwiches and Spinach Salad

I made some Italian beef Friday. I used a package of Louie’s Italian beef seasoning for the au jus. I had a recipe that was getting pretty good but Louies makes it a lot easier and tastes great.

I like to use a beef eye of round roast, all nice lean meat. My butcher didn’t have any cut but had this rolled rump roast in netting that looked good so I bought it, 3 ¼ pounds

I did the roast up Thursday. I seasoned it well with salt, pepper, dried garlic and onion flakes and oregano. I did it on smoke mode 175 deg. for one hour then went to 250 deg. for the rest of the cook. 3 ½ total cook time. I pulled it at 135 deg. IT and let it cool unwrapped. I then wrapped in saran and foil and in the fridge overnight.

Friday AM I got the roast sliced using my new Chef’s Choice Mod. 610 slicer for the first time. I would recommend it for a good light duty slicer.

I mixed Louie’s seasoning pack w/a cup of cold water. Sliced a red, yellow, red pepper and a med. Vidalia onion. I layered half the peppers and onions in my Crockpot, half the sliced beef and a couple Tbs. of sliced pepperoncini’s with some of the juice. I poured half the Louie’s juice over then repeated the layer. I added enough water to almost cover. This was at 11:00 AM. Cooked on high for an hour then low until supper time at 6:00.

I made up our favorite spinach salad to serve along with the beef sandwich. We got the recipe from my wife’s cousin Suzie. I’m not sure where she got it but I have been making it for over 20 years at least. If you like fresh spinach this is delicious.

I prefer hard crust buns for the Italian Beef to soak up that good au jus; but had some soft mini subs to use up. I toasted them before; ladled the beef and au jus over both halves so it was a knife and fork sandwich. Tasted great with the spinach salad.

The rolled rump roast was very tender even though some of it was sliced with the grain.

Printable Spinach Salad Recipe

Roast seasoned and ready to smoke