The Bear 'Italian beef' sandwich recipe

Preheat the oven to 160°C/140°C fan/325°F/gas mark 3.

Get a large oven-proof casserole-type dish on a high heat with 4 tbsp of the extra virgin olive oil in it. Heavily season the meat with salt and pepper and brown it in a huge chunk, or cut into a few smaller pieces if your pan isn’t big enough.

Once browned all over, remove the meat from the pan, add the remaining oil, get it hot and add the onion, carrot, celery and garlic cloves and brown everything. Take your time, we’re building flavour here. Add the tomatoes (keeping them whole) and their juice, and the pepper quarters and bubble and boil until thickened and all has become one (two minutes).

Add the stock, bring it to the boil and add all the spices and powders. Put the beef back in the pan – it should be 50 per cent (-ish) covered by the liquid. Put the lid on and bang it in the oven until cooked to 45°C inside, which should take about 35-50 minutes depending on how accurate your oven temperature is. If you have a temperature probe this would be easy, otherwise, you’re gonna have to hope. To be honest, as you will later thinly slice the meat and recook it in the sieved braising liquid, it doesn’t really matter.

Once the big chunk of meat is cooked, take it out of the pan and put it on a plate. Sieve the cooking liquid into a roasting tray or some high sided vessel. Keep only the peppers from the sieved liquid, add them to the tray with the meat and the liquid. Refrigerate for at least 12 hours or overnight.

Take the roasting tray from the fridge and use a spoon to scrape the fat off the top of the liquid and discard. Remove the beef and cut into as thin slices as you can manage with your biggest, sharpest knife. Reserve the liquid and peppers in the roasting tray.

For the Chicago-style Giardiniera pickle

‘It’s the chilli flakes that make this ‘Chicago-Style’

• 1 whole head of celery, topped and tailed and chopped into small chunks
• 4 carrots, peeled and diced into similar size chunks
• 1 red pepper, quartered, white pith, seeds and stalk removed, and diced
• 1 cauliflower, florets removed from stalk and diced similarly
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 ltr pickling liquor made from 660ml white wine vinegar, 330ml water and 330g sugar
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 1 tsp celery seeds
• 1tsp dried oregano
• 200ml extra virgin olive oil

Put the prepared veg in a large plastic bowl, sprinkle the salt all over and massage everything together with your hands. Let sit for 1 hour. Empty the contents of the bowl into a sieve/colander to drain off all the water the salt has drawn from the veg. Put the veg back in the bowl.

Heat the pickling liquor ingredients (and the oregano, chilli flakes and celery seeds) in a saucepan, whisking to dissolve the sugar, until it is just too hot for you to put your finger in. Tip this over the vegetables, leave to cool and refrigerate overnight.

Drain the veg and discard the pickling liquor (or get some mates round and drink loads of picklebacks!). Drench the veg in the olive oil and set aside until ready to use.

To assemble each sandwich

You’ll need 1 x 6in-length of baguette or a crusty white roll of your choosing, cut lengthways but not all the way through.

Reheat the roasting tray with all the gravy and peppers in it. Take as many slices of beef as you would like in your sandwich and simmer them in the gravy for 10 minutes until very much well done. If you want to give them less time in the liquid, please do, it’s your sandwich.

Heap the hot meat slices into the bread you have chosen, along with some of the peppers, if you fancy, and consider ladling in some more gravy (we also added mayonnaise to the bread). Cover everything in giardiniera, try to close the sandwich and if you didn’t add more gravy dunk the front and back ends of your sandwich in it, wrap in a double layer of greaseproof paper, cut the whole thing in half, find 100 napkins and get stuck in.

Season 4 of The Bear is on Disney+ from Thursday 26 June – sign up to Disney Plus for £4.99 a month or £79.90 a year now.