Steak Pizzaiola is a dish I ate frequently as a kid but hadn't fully reveled in its frugality until I grew up and had to feed my own family. While many restaurants try to fancy it up with expensive cuts of beef, the good news is this old-school meal is actually better when more affordable methods are employed.

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https://youtu.be/KWqFs4UE3tQ

Steak Pizzaiola, or carne alla pizzaiola, refers to steak (or beef) cooked in the pizza-maker style.

While it's open to various interpretations, I've always known it to include some sort of steak cooked in a tomato sauce that's been heavily flavored with oregano.

While my steak pizzaiola recipe includes chuck steak, peppers, and mushrooms, it can be made with other ingredients as well.

I've always known it as a more economical dish, although many restaurants will serve it with a more expensive cut of beef, such as a ribeye or porterhouse.

While the expensive steaks are tasty in their own right, I prefer to take a more affordable approach since it's easier on the wallet but also honors the history of alla pizzaiola.

In the Steak Pizzaiola podcast episode, we share our personal experiences with steak pizzaiola, touch briefly on its slightly hazy history, and explore the 2 main methods of preparing this beloved dish.

Resources

Sip and Feast Steak Pizzaiola Recipe

Sip and Feast Chicken Pizzaiola Recipe

Sip and Feast Stuffed Mushrooms with Pizzaiola Sauce Recipe

Memorie di Angelina's La Pizzaiola

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Transcript

Intro

James (00:00):Welcome back to the Sip and Feast podcast. Today we're talking steak pizzaiola. We're discussing the intricacies of this dish, the history of the dish, what it means to us, what it means to you, Tara, what it means if you grew up in the New York, New Jersey area, you probably know this dish. Your mother, your Nona, your friends, your uncle, somebody probably made it for you. Somebody probably said they make a mean steak pizzaiola. Conversely, if you grew up in an area outside of this little pocket of America, you might not have heard of this dish. How do I know that? Well, we just put up the recipe on the main channel and it's got about… I don't know, it has over a hundred thousand views, which is a good amount to a good sample size. There were probably, Tara, I would say 20, 30, maybe 50 comments that said they never heard of the dish, right?

(00:54):That's my non-scientific way of knowing that it might not be too known outside of this area. That's why I want to share it with you today and let you know how good it is and how delicious it can be. If you're a fan of Everybody Loves Raymond, then you have heard of this dish because I believe, and I never really watched the show, Tara, I believe Ray used to say that his mother made the best steak pizzaiola.

Tara (01:22):I think that's the story behind it.

James (01:23):You don't know either. You don't watch the show either.

Tara (01:25):I watched episodes here and there of it. Your parents are huge fans of it. Maybe we should have asked them what they thought of the steak pizzaiola references in the show, but no, my understanding is that Marie Barone, Doris Roberts' character, made the best steak pizzaiola.

James (01:46):Well, I don't know if my version's going to be as good as Marie's, but we're going to talk about the difference between how it's done in a household and how it's done in a restaurant. We're going to bring a little bit of the history of this dish, which from my understanding isn't too popular in Italy either, right?

Tara (02:02):There wasn't a whole lot of information about where it originated, mainly just theories.

What is steak pizzaiola?

James (02:08):Before Tara gives the backstory, I will just tell you simply, it goes by carne alla pizzaiola, bistecca alla pizzaiola, and basically… Tara, what does all pizzaiola mean?

Tara (02:21):Pizzaiola translates… It's an Italian word. Translate it into English, it means pizza chef or pizza maker. The dish usually refers to meat that's cooked in a pizza maker style. What exactly does that mean? It's usually a tough cut of beef that's braised in a tomato sauce with oregano. I think it's the oregano with the tomatoes that give it the pizza maker name. Am I right about that?

James (02:56):Yeah, that's right.

Tara (02:57):Okay.

James (02:58):Yeah.

Tara (02:58):Yeah. There's usually some sort of vegetable that goes along with that. I know our recipe includes peppers and mushrooms. Onions.

James (03:08):Oh, you found out that there is a vegetable always included in it?

Tara (03:12):No, I'm just saying all the versions that I've had of the dish include. I've never had it with just beef and tomato sauce.

James (03:19):I think really it probably is often done just with beef and tomato sauce. I wasn't sure because I always make it with mushrooms or peppers.

(03:27):We will talk more about it in a second, the different variations for it. Before Tara goes on here, I don't think I'm selling… I don't think I'm not selling enough. I didn't sell it all to you how good this dish is. It's a super flavorful dish. It's from… The way that… Now again, I'm talking about one of the versions. It's the way the meat combines with the tomatoes and the cooking process that flavors the sauce. It makes it very… It's a very hardy dish. The type of cut of beef too that I typically use and many others use makes it even hardier. It's a winter dish for me, a fall and winter dish. I wouldn't really want to eat this during the spring and summer, though I do enjoy plenty of steak during the spring and summer. This dish is almost heavier than your typical, just a regular steak.

Tara (04:18):It's almost like a beef stew, but just with tomatoes and not with a broth.

James (04:24):Many people, when we did the video, a lot of the people didn't know what it was, but then other ones were saying, who still didn't know what it was, they were like, this is a dish called Swiss Steak.

Tara (04:34):Yes, that's right. Those were a lot of comments we had.

James (04:36):There was a lot of comparison to that as well. But I'll let Tara go on about more info about it and the backstory.

Tara (04:43):Okay. Like we said before, there wasn't a whole lot of information on steak pizzaiola. I tried to do as much research as I could, but what I did find was that some theories say it originated in Naples. Others say it originated in Sicily. There's one story that said this was something that a pizza maker would make for themselves while they were tending to the pizza for their customers. I guess it was something they would just almost set and forget while they were doing other things. But again, the information that was out there was very limited, especially compared to some of the other dishes that we've spoken about like pasta fazool. There's a lot more historical information there.

James (05:33):That's interesting because this dish is… It's a very popular dish here. Maybe that makes sense because it's Neapolitan or Sicilian.

Personal experience with the dish

Tara (05:42):My thought was that since I wasn't able to gain a whole lot of insight into the history of steak pizzaiola, I thought maybe we could just share our own history.

James (05:54):My experience with the dish is from the way my mother and my grandmother made it. This is another one of the dishes that I had a lot growing up. Now, it's funny. A cut of chuck, which is what my mother used, and she would use chuck steaks that were with the bone, which are harder to find now, definitely harder to find here in the places that we frequent, but she would get these very thin stakes. These stakes were cut specifically on the bandsaw, how a butcher does it, into about a half inch thick. They had the bone in them and then the meat was a half inch thick. They were perfect in that sense, maybe three quarter inch thick, that essentially this would make you not have to do a three hour brace, because if you ever made a pot roast with a full chuck steak, you're looking at a three hour, it could be up to four hour brazing time, versus if you cut the steaks, that whole chuck steak, very into very thin pieces, you'll accelerate the cooking time.

(06:56):But that's how my mother made it. She made it with that type of cut of beef always. That's also how my grandmother made it. It was really simple. My mother wouldn't even put mushrooms or peppers, which is what I do now. She would just do tomatoes, plum tomatoes, a lot of garlic. Honestly, I don't even think she finished it with any herbs or anything. I don't think she used white wine. I think it was really the essence of the dish was that tomato, the garlic, and we would serve it… You would serve it with cheese on top. Besides the oregano, you would serve it with cheese on top at the end, which is what you would do with most dishes.

Tara (07:35):Did she serve it with rice or pasta? How did she serve it?

James (07:39):I always remember white rice being what it was served with. I remember a lot of dishes that she would do, but it was my grandmother more, I think. That baked rice dish that we did a few months ago, riso al forno, which is a delicious dish, that gives me a little bit of a similarity because she would bake it with the red sauce and the cheese. It was also the red sauce and the cheese for the steak pizzaiola.