Most people outside of Chicago associate the Windy City’s cuisine with two dishes. First there’s Chicago deep-dish pizza once the center of the “is it really pizza” debate. Right behind it is the Chicago-style hot dog famous for its fierce anti-ketchup stance. It’s a curious thing how these two dishes have come to define the perception of Chicago cuisine thanks in no small part to the fact that they’re often seen as rivals to New York City’s own pizza and hot dogs. In truth neither deep-dish pizza nor hot dogs are the true hallmarks of Chicago. Ask any local and they’ll almost certainly give that title to Italian beef.
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Johnnie's Iconic Italian Beef Is a Delicious Beef and Gravy Blend | Legendary Eats | Insider Food
The Italian Beef is a sandwich but you won’t hear it called an “Italian Beef Sandwich” because the dish is so ubiquitous among Chicagoans that no qualification is necessary. It’s made with a lean cut of beef usually sirloin or top round. The meat is slow roasted and sliced very thinly before being bathed in au jus made from the fat that collects during the roasting process. It’s served on a French roll with roasted peppers or Italian giardiniera. The end result is the juiciest sandwich you’ll ever eat and some people even take it a step further by dunking the entire loaf of bread in au jus. It has captured hearts all over Chicago not only as a meal but as a symbol of Italian-American history.
There are a few competing theories about the origins of Italian beef but the man most often credited with its invention is Anthony Ferreri. Around the time World War I ended Ferreri was a street vendor traveling around Chicago selling cold sandwiches. His big break came after he attended a peanut wedding. “What the heck is a peanut wedding?” you might ask. It’s an old custom that you don’t see much of these days but it was once a symbol of the Italian-American experience.
Chicago experienced a large wave of Italian immigrants in the early 1900s. They were generally poor a problem that was exacerbated after World War I when the Great Depression hit the country. As a result many Italian Americans of the time could not afford extravagant weddings so they were often held in the homes of couples with a shoestring budget for food. Peanuts were served as well as beef sandwiches. Chicago known throughout history as a meatpacking hub had beef in abundance.
