French Dip Sandwich

There’s no disputing that the French dip sandwich originates in Los Angeles, but where in LA is up for a bit of debate. Two old-school LA sandwich shops, Cole’s and Philippe the Original, claim to have invented the beloved jus-dipped roast beef sandwich. Philippe’s asserts that its founder, Philippe Mathieu, invented the sandwich in 1918 when he accidently dropped a French roll into a juice-filled roasting pan before building the sandwich and serving it to a customer. Cole’s, however, says that it created the sandwich in 1908 for a customer who requested that the crunchy bread be softened with meat juice due to a sore mouth. 

The versions “invented” by both restaurants and still served today are similar: Thin slices of freshly roasted beef are dipped in a rich, intensely savory beef jus, then layered into a soft french roll—that’s also dipped into the jus— and served alongside a bowl of jus for further dipping. It’s such a wet, messy, glorious affair that it's no wonder people are fighting for creation credit.

From its roots in LA, the French dip has grown in popularity to become a regular menu item at bars and restaurants across the U.S. I remember having my first French dip alongside a refreshing IPA at a bar outside of Bozemen, Montana, nowhere near LA. It was comforting and warm, everything I wanted on a cold winter’s night. But this sandwich doesn’t need to be limited to dining out. Here’s a look at what makes for a great French dip and how to prepare the multi-napkin-worthy sandwich at home.

The Beef

Selecting the Right Cut of Beef for French Dip

The beef of choice at both Philippe’s and Cole’s is the bottom round roast. It has plenty of deep brawny mineral-rich flavor. It’s also fairly lean and doesn’t have a webbing of connective tissue running throughout it or deep pockets of fat, both of which would make slicing the meat very thinly and even chewing it more challenging. 

At the restaurants, huge bottom round roasts, upwards to 20 pounds each, are slowly cooked with low heat before they’re sliced paper thin with a deli slicer. But rather than a huge bottom round, I use a top round roast in this recipe. The two cuts are similar in texture and flavor, but top round is often sold in a three-pound roast size, which is perfect for making six sandwiches at home. It might be tempting to “upgrade” to a more expensive and fattier cut like tenderloin or prime rib, but neither of those would work well here (for different reasons). While tenderloin has a soft, buttery texture that would be great for this sandwich, it lacks the deep beefy flavor that a cut like bottom round has. And while prime rib has incredible flavor, its marbled pockets of fat would be unpleasantly chewy. For the best roast beef for sandwiches at home, stick with the top round.

Cook it Right

The key to great roast beef is to not overcook it. You want it to remain tender and juicy—not dry and tough. While we don't really want to overcook any beef roast, it's extra important here because a top round roast has very little fat for insulation if the temp goes too high: you’ve gotta get the cook right here or you'll be chewing leather and not satiny roast beef. 

Pre-salting, or dry-brining, the roast for at least an hour before cooking is the first step to ensure a juicy roast. Over an extended time, salt will begin to dissolve proteins. This allows the meat to hold onto its moisture while cooking. Pre-salting also promotes better browning by drawing the moisture back into the roast, rather than pooling on the exterior. The roast will have a dryer surface to promote better browning when it hits the skillet to sear. 

While I am a fan of Kenji’s reverse sear method when I cook rib-eye steaks at home, I found this method impractical for this recipe’s order of operations. To build a flavorful jus to accompany the roast, I needed to first sauté the aromatics in the fond from the beef’s sear, before cooking the aromatic base underneath the roast in the oven (I explain the method for cooking the jus in detail below). A reverse sear simply doesn’t fit into the game plan. Plus, I had great results when I seared the beef first before slowly roasted it. When I pulled it right at 125℉ (50℃), the roast was pink, succulent and easy to slice.

Let It Rest and Slice It Thinly

Once cooked, the meat needs to rest and cool fully before slicing. Not only does resting the meat keep all the juices from flowing out when you cut into it, letting it rest and cool also makes it much easier to slice thinly.

About that slicing—the real challenge of making deli-style roast beef at home is that without a powerful deli slicer, which most of us don't have, it's almost impossible to slice the beef as uniformly and thinly as what you’d find in a restaurant or at the deli counter.here are a couple techniques to help us get the thinnest slices possible when hand slicing. The first is a sharp slicing or carving knife. It needs to be razor sharp, and works best when the blade is long and thin to minimize friction from the surface of the knife rubbing against the meat as you slice. Are your knives on the dull side? Maybe this recipe can be your motivation to get them sharpened; you won't regret it.

The other thing that helps tremendously is to cool the beef down. The colder it is, the firmer it will be, which makes slicing easier. If you have the forethought and the time, roast the beef a day ahead and refrigerate it before slicing it so that it will be as firm as possible before you attempt to shave off paper-thin slices (note that if you are roasting the beef ahead of time, you’ll also want to finish the jus at that time and refrigerate it separately as well).

That said, even with those precautions taken, it's just a fact that it's just about impossible to cut roast beef by hand as thinly and evenly as a deli can with their machine's whirling circular blade and precision thickness settings. But you can still get it close enough to deliver on the promise of thin sheets of roast beef that bend and curl over each other for a great sandwich.

The Jus

The jus is what puts the “dip” into the french dip sandwich. It’s a crucial part of the sandwich’s success. It needs to be concentrated in beef flavor, balanced, and have added complexity from layered aromatics. The texture of the jus is also critical. We’re looking for that “goldilocks moment”—not too thick, not too thin, but juuuust right, where the jus absorbs into and softens the bread while also clinging to the meat. Too thick and the jus ventures into gravy territory—it will coat the meat and bread without fully absorbing into it. If the jus is too thin, it will get absorbed into the bread but it won’t cling to the meat. Viscosity matters here. In culinary school I was taught the term “nappé” to describe the consistency of a sauce that would coat the back of a spoon. This jus should have the lightest nappé consistency possible. Just a hint of body to it.

At large scale restaurants like Philippe’s and Cole’s they achieve the above described idyllic jus by making huge quantities in industrial steam kettles that run nonstop. The jus is composed of the beef drippings from the hundreds of pounds of beef that they always have roasting on rotation, along with beef bones, mirepoix, garlic, and various aromatic kitchen scraps. Phillippe’s general manager, Richard Binder, told Eater, that the jus simmers away and reduces for a full 24 hours. This sounds incredible, right? But not easily replicated in an at-home version.

I wanted an intensively savory beef jus without relying on the beef drippings from hundreds of pounds of beef and 24 hours of simmering in my home kitchen. And of course, it still needed to be great. After rounds of testing, I arrived at an approachable home version that I believe still has all of the elements of a great French dip jus. The following techniques are key:

• Use a Good Stock: Since we can't collect the juices from dozens of roasts like the restaurants do, we need to build our jus with a flavorful stock. With the juices produced from the one roast we do have, plus the other flavoring elements, we're able to create a rich and flavorful jus for the sandwiches that will taste like it came from dozens of roasts.
  
  The best choice for stock here is a good quality homemade beef stock, which is doable in a reasonable amount of time with the help of a pressure cooker. If making your own beef stock is out, you can see if your butcher sells their own homemade beef stock (often sold frozen). If not that, a good chicken stock, especially a brown chicken stock made by roasting the bones and aromatics first, will be a worthy stand-in. The easiest but least spectacular choice is to buy a box of low-sodium chicken broth from the supermarket. You can do it, you'll still have delicious sandwiches and the jus will be plenty tasty, but it won't be as deeply rich and complex as one of the other options.
  
  Note also that a good homemade beef or chicken stock will have high levels of natural gelatin, which will give you a jump start on the more viscous, lip-sticking viscosity we're after in this jus, versus a store-bought broth that will not (though you could always add a packet of unflavored gelatin to store-bought stock to fake that effect a little).
  
  If you do go the store bought route, stick with store bought chicken broth and not beef broth. It might be your first instinct to reach for store-bought packaged beef stock for this recipe (it is a beef jus we’re making after all), but store-bought beef stock is consistently overly salty and lacks anything close to real beef flavor. Store-bought chicken broth tends to be a better product with more depth of flavor. Just be sure to choose a low-sodium option, which will give you better control of the final seasoning level in the jus.
• Lean into Savory Aromatics: One way to enhance the broth so that it's deeply rich and savory is to introduce a strong array of aromatics. Onion is an important one here:ently browning it in butter and beef fat and then using it as a bed for the beef as it roasts adds an unmistakable sweetness and complexity to the jus.On top of onion,, I add even more savory depth with umami-rich and earthy dried porcini mushrooms, the concentrated sweetness of tomato paste, and the herbal edge of fresh thyme. 
• Thicken with Flour and Tomato Paste: Not only does the tomato paste add a sweet caramelized flavor to the sauce, it also helps enhance the sauce's body thanks to its natural pectin and fiber. A bit of flour on top of that ever so lightly thickens the jus further, just enough to help it cling to the food and remove any traces of thin wateriness so that it's perfect for dipping.
• Roast the Aromatics with the Beef: By roasting the beef with the onion and other aromatics, its drippings infuse directly into the sauce base as it cooks lightly and caramelizes, developing incredible flavor in the process. It’s an easy, hands-off way to build flavor into the jus while roasting the beef.
• Further Caramelize the Aromatics: Once the roast is cooked and set aside to cool, it's worth taking the time to cook the aromatic mixture even more on the stovetop until it is deeply caramelized. This only takes a few minutes, and then you can go ahead and add your stock to complete the jus.

The Bread

The best bread for a French dip sandwich is a light and crusty French roll. Please note, a French roll is not a baguette. A baguette’s hard exterior would be too tough to chew through, while a French roll has a tight, even interior crumb that is light but with a slight chew to it. The light, crisp, golden-brown crust is also easy to sink your teeth through, with a crust that flakes easily when bitten into.

A French roll also has the ideal sponge-like texture tol absorb the jus well while also remaining sturdy and intact when dipped into the jus (a baguette’s interior crumb is too open to absorb enough of jus). If French rolls are unavailable, a hoagie or sub roll would be the best substitute.

The Cheese

To cheese or not to cheese? My answer is always to cheese. Cheese adds tangy flavor, richness from the fat, and moisture to any sandwich. But you could argue that a French dip doesn’t need cheese to make it great. The jus is the primary source of flavor, richness, and needless to say, moisture with a French dip. While cheese isn’t a defining feature with a French dip, I’m a fan of thin slices of Swiss cheese briefly melted over the assembled sandwich. Swiss cheese has a noticeable tang that stands up to the beefy jus and it melts easily and it’s one of the options offered at both Philippe the Original and Cole’s.

The Dip

It’s time to put that lovely and thoughtfully made jus to good use. At restaurant’s like Cole’s and Philippe’s, the dipping process is a well orchestrated dance. The bread is first warmed through briefly before being sliced into two separate halves. Each half is effortlessly pierced with a large knife that’s used to fully submerge the roll into a cauldron of jus. You can even order the sandwich dipped a few different ways, listed below.
Dry: The sandwich is served bone dry and not dipped all, with the jus served on the side.

Single Dip: Just the top half of the roll is briefly dipped all the way into the jus.

Double Dip: Both halves of the roll are quickly dipped in the jus.

Wet: You guessed it, the roll is served sopping wet. It’s completely dunked into the jus, and left in the jus for a few extra minutes to absorb even more.

I’ve written the double dip technique into this recipe but with two minor modifications. Instead of piercing the bread with a sharp knife, I recommend using tongs or even your fingers. The pros make the knife technique look effortless, but when I tried piercing my rolls with a steak knife at home, I found that if I didn’t hold the knife at just the right angle, the bread slipped right off. One time onto the floor! 

The second modification for my double dip technique is that I call for dipping just the cut side of the rolls. When made at home, the rolls are dipped into a smaller amount of jus in a skillet compared to the dipping process in sandwich shops that use a deep vat of jus. It’s more practical to dip just the cut side of the roll into the skillet than to attempt to flip the roll around and try to get every bit covered. Saturating just the cut side of both bread halves was enough for a juicy sandwich experience. But this is your sandwich and you can dunk and dip it however you want. Just don’t leave any jus behind—it’s too good to let it go to waste.