French Dip Sandwich with Au Jus

I love french dip sandwiches and so does my family. When I don't feel like cooking, its such an easy meal to make and healthier than eating at our local restaurant chain with all its processed food. Previously (before our switch to unprocessed foods and meals), I would just buy a condensed can of beef consomme and use that as our Au Jus sauce. But after reading the label of ingredients on the back of the can of soup and not understanding half the ingredients' list, I decided a change needed to take place in order to make the meal more healthy and less processed for my family. I searched online for homemade versions of beef consomme and from my research (Let me remind you, I am only a hobby cook) the soup takes a long time to make and ends up as a clear liquid (really!? how is that possible)...sounds like too much work to me. So I found a base for my own version of Au Jus and adapted it with some minor changes. Thanks to Katie over at Chaos in the Kitchen for the inspiration to my own unprocessed version of Au Jus with some consomme' characteristics. The whole point of this meal is to be easy and use as little processed ingredients as possible. Roasted garlic mayonnaise (condiment of choice for this sandwich) is very simple to make for yourself, see step 4 below.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups beef broth, organic or natural
• 1 small onion, sliced into rings
• 1 carrot diced
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1-2 TBSP organic ketchup (or to minimize sugars use tomato paste)
• 2 bay leaves
• salt and pepper for taste
• 4 hoagie rolls
• 1lb lean, deli roast beef, thinly sliced
• roasted garlic
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise (I prefer the olive oil all natural version)

In a medium sauce pan, add beef broth, onion, carrot, garlic, ketchup (tomato paste) and seasonings to a boil.

 

Boil vigorously until reduced by half. You should be able to measure out 2-3 cups of au jus.

Mix the roasted garlic (just place a garlic head in a small crock or aluminum foil, drizzle with olive oil, and place in the oven under the broiler until mushy) and mayonnaise to make the tangy mayo condiment. 

Heat the sliced roast beef directly in the sauce pan with the au jus. Slice hoagie rolls and open, butter the insides and place under broiler in your oven until slightly crisp. Watch the rolls! Just like my roasted pepper post, I tend to multitask while cooking and several times caught the rolls, or any food product for that matter, on fire because I walked away too long.

Once the rolls are crunchy, spread the garlic mayo on one side of each roll, loosely pile 3-4 ounces of roast beef on top of the mayo. Serve sandwiches with au jus on the side.

The side dish is my Garlic Baked Potato Wedges.