Spicyt Swiss Steak

By Lsweetnell

I would tenderize the meat and pound to flatten; however, I would throw into the crock pot with (sauteed onions, green pepper, celery) and use a can of whole tomatoes as instructed and crushed by hand including the juice and V8 juice. You could lightly brown the meat first. Add a little flour or cornstarch at the end to thicken the sauce a little. Definitely great with mashed potatoes. You could use a chuck roast for this.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs Top Round or Sirloin Steak (3/4-1” thick)
• 1 lg can (28 oz) Roma tomatoes—whole or sliced
• 1 green bell pepper
• 1 medium (baseball size) onion
• 2 stalks celery finely diced
• 1 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded and pith removed (optional)
• 1 12 oz can “Snappy Tom” juice or spicy V-8
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cooking oil
• Lg Casserole dish with cover or heavy duty foil for
• Cover

Details

Adapted from cheap-bastid-cooks.com

Preparation

Step 1

On a cutting board, cut meat first into 2-3 equal size pieces (this makes it easier to work with). Put one of the “hunks” of meat either into a freezer bag & seal it or between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Once you do that, put it on flat on the cutting board & tenderize the meat by whacking it repeatedly with a meat mallet/tenderizer. What you’re doing is making the meat more tender. Pound all over until the meat is about ½ inch thick. Do this to all the meat and then cut each hunk into about 3”x 3” pieces.
Put flour in a shallow dish or paper plate & liberally season it with salt & pepper (about a tablespoon of each if you’re using 2 cups of flour) OR season each piece of meat on both sides before dredging it through the flour.
In either a large, heavy skillet or an electric frying pan, pour enough oil so that it’s about ⅛” or so deep, Turn heat to medium high (375 on electric frying pan).
Cook meat in batches. Dredge pieces of meat through the flour, liberally coating all sides. Then shake off excess and put in the hot oil (lay it in—don’t plop it!) You want a quick browning of the meat so after a couple of minutes, gently turn it over with a fork or with tongs. Don’t worry about getting the meat done—medium is great, or just nicely browned—it’s going into the oven anyway.
When browned, remove the meat and “drain” on paper towel covered plate or pan & do another batch. It’s best to brown the meat in 2-3 batches and also to let the oil heat back up between batches. Add more oil if needed to keep about ¼” depth in the pan.
The veggies: It’s simple, chop the pepper, onion and celery into about ⅜” pieces. This will go into the baking dish along with the tomatoes--BUT, I kind of like to toss the veggies into the hot skillet with just a couple of tablespoons of the leftover cooking oil and sweat them for 3 or 4 minutes before combining with the tomatoes. Then dump the canned tomatoes (if you’re using whole tomatoes you can just grab each tomato and squish it to break it up or rough chop it) into the casserole dish along with the spicy tomato juice.
Add the browned meat. Try and get it flat and down in all the red stuff. Cover it and put into the oven pre-heated to 375. Give it a good 1 ½ hours. It’s done when you stab a piece of meat and it wants to fall apart--that's "fork tender". I really like it when the meat falls apart when you just show it the fork.
If you want, you can remove the meat from the baking dish and then, depending on how the sauce came out either thicken it with a cornstarch slurry to get it to a gravy consistency or you can thin it out with either a bit of water or broth to get the consistency you want. Or, just leave it alone like I did the other night when the finished dish's sauce was pretty thick. Either way, you'll want to let it cool down for a good 10-15 minutes so you can eat it.
Serve with mashed potatoes and use the sauce for gravy. It smells great cooking and it tastes great too!