Best Yummy French Dip Sandwiches & Au Jus Sauce

I love French Dip sandwiches! A good homemade au jus sauce to dip them is the “icing on the cake”. We can no longer eat out at most restaurants. That is the downside of eating “real” food that is organic and gmo-free. Another reason is that they tend to use raw-to-me beef slices. ugh! I cook my beef done. Ex-cow. No blood or pink. Yes, it is still tender the way I cook a roast. I use a crockpot most of the time.

You could get deli roast, too. Having them slice it to your preferred thickness, is a plus. I used to love when the delis had good grass-fed roast and they would slivc it very thin. I would lay it down on the bread, giving it a ripple and scrunching it up to put a lot of meat on the bread. Even our localish organic deli has pink meat. sigh… It sucks to be picky. ;D

I have tried the various au jus sauces in the stores, packaged and premade. I found them too salty usually. Once I started reading the chemicals called “food ingredients”, most being unpronounceable, I knew I needed to come up with a good homemade au jus sauce recipe.

This recipe is great for those last slices of beef or even the “crumbles” if a roast fell to pieces. laughing… You will notice that the sandwich photo has the beef “crumbles” because it was made with the last bits of a tender roast. The sauce is homemade, using a safe bouillon base I found that is not overly salty. You will notice the sauce is not dark like the commercial version. If you must have your sauce dark, maybe a sploosh of that Bouquet stuff for that look? Your choice. ;D Enjoy!

*We find the salt content for Better than Bouillon to be just right. You can add a pinch of salt if you prefer it saltier. Start with the lesser amount of the bouillon and add more to taste. I lean towards the larger amount, personally.

Add all ingredients into a medium sauce pan. Leave celery and onion in big chunks for easy removal.

Simmer until the vegetables are done. Strain, saving the au jus liquid. Put au jus sauce back into the pot and add beef. Cover. Let simmer on medium-low heat for at least 20 minutes for the beef to enhance the sauce and vice-versa for the beef.

*Alternately, pour strained au jus sauce into a small crock pot, add the beef and let the au jus sauce “meld” with the beef for an hour or two.

Assembling the French Dip Sandwiches

Slice the rolls. Strain the sauce from the beef into a measuring cup and place beef on bread. You may want to slice the sandwich in half for easy eating. Pour sauce into 4 small dipping bowls for serving 4.

Note: I found my recipe for Armenian Peda Bread or Classic Italian or French Bread makes the best rolls for the French Dip Sandwiches. I prefer the Armenian Peda Bread the best. It sucks up the homemade au jus sauce much better and a little softer than the french bread, though it is a tender bread too.

If using the Armenian Peda Bread 1/2 recipe that I feature, (the full loaves recipe will come this fall or winter), you can make 8 regular-sized rolls or 4 large rolls. If you use the Classic Italian or French Bread recipe, that will give you 8 large rolls or 16 regular-sized rolls.

I hope you like these French Dip sandwiches and the homemade Au Jus Sauce as much as we do!