Portillo's Italian Beef and Peter Luger Steak Sauce

Weekend cheat meal.

Portillo's Beef dipper, Mod, hot peppers aka (giardiniera), hacked in some awesome Peter Luger steak sauce.

Our famous, homemade, Italian beef is slow-roasted for four hours, thinly sliced, and served on freshly baked Turano French bread. There are many ways to order an Italian beef sandwich. The standard sandwich is served by splashing a bit of our flavorful, secretly-spiced gravy on it. Some like their sandwich “dipped,” which means we dip the whole sandwich in our gravy. You can also order it “dry,” with very little gravy. Why do we call it gravy? Because it’s actual gravy, just like grandma used to serve: We use the beef’s natural gravy that comes off of it while roasting for four hours.

Our Italian beef sandwiches taste best topped with our homemade, oven-roasted sweet peppers or hot giardiniera peppers.

From Linda Eckhardt's Guide to America's Best Foods: "This is the best. Their own steak sauce is not only great on steak, but also served on slabs of red ripe tomatoes. You can't do without this. They only began selling their sauce after customers begged. We love this sauce on hamburgers. We love it on chicken. The taste is somewhere between cocktail sauce - it's spicy with horseradish and traditional steak sauce - being a rich brown color. The sauce is fat-free. It tastes so good you won't mind."