This Crock Pot French Dip Recipe is easy to make, budget-friendly, and delicious. You can make perfect French dip sandwiches in your crock pot for game-day parties or everyday meals. Use a chuck roast or a similar cut and slow it all day in a flavorful homemade braising fluid until it is fall-apart tender. We like serving it in hoagie buns with melted cheese and au jus for dipping.
🐄Ingredients
Beef roast—chuck roast or similar
Aromatics—onions, garlic
Beef Broth—low sodium
Pantry ingredients—low sodium soy sauce, low sodium Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, and salt.
Serving—sub buns, cheese (Provolone, Swiss, Havarti, or Monterey Jack)
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Featured Comment by Darice:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Dr. Dan you've done it again! These French Dip Sandwiches are amazing and so easy to prepare."
This French Dip beef recipe is simple to make ahead and store. Everybody will love these delicious sandwiches with tender beef cooked in a flavorful liquid that makes au jus in your slow cooker.
See other crock pot sandwich recipes, like our Crock Pot Shredded Pork Tenderloin, Crock Pot Pulled Pork Loin, Crock Pot BBQ Chicken, and Crock Pot Pulled Boston Butt.
👨🍳How to Make Crock Pot French Dip Sandwiches—Step-by-Step Photo Instructions
1. Trim a chuck roast and add salt and pepper. Sear for about 3 minutes per side, then transfer to a crock pot.
2. Cook sliced onions until starting to clear. Add garlic and cook one more minute. Pour on top of the beef.
3. To a crock pot, add beef broth, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce and mix.
4. Cook on low for 5 hours, remove the meat, and slice across the grain into ½ inch slices.
5. Return to the crock pot to cook for the final 2 hours until a temperature of 200° or more.
6. At the end of cooking, break up the slices to make the serving easier. Save the liquid as au jus.
7. To serve, cut hoagie rolls into half and briefly toast. Top the bottom half with meat and provolone cheese, and then cook under a broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is nicely brown.
8. Serve with the cooking solution as au jus for dipping.
For more details, keep reading. See the Recipe Card below for complete instructions and to print.
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🤔Make it right every time.
The short browning of the meat enhances the flavor through a Maillard reaction, and caramelizing the onions also enhances the flavor. Both are optional but suggested.
The brief cooking of garlic does two things. First, it brings out the garlic flavors, called blooming the garlic. Second, it eliminates the raw taste of fresh, uncooked garlic.
Slicing the beef and placing it back in to cook more allows the flavors of the braising fluid (au jus) to penetrate all the meat and prevents long strands of meat in the final results. This, too, is optional but suggested.
You can remove the beef at the end and shred it, but it tends to fall apart. So, I stir it a bit and use the slotted spoon to fish it out with a lot of onion. As you remove it, check for waste or unshredded beef.
The shredding temperature for beef is 200° or more. However, leaner cuts may still not shred well. If your beef is fully cooked but not shredding well, chop it to serve.
If you are cooking a larger or thicker beef roast, cook to 200° and not by time.
🐄Ingredient options and variations
A nice chuck roast is a good choice. My favorite is an English-cut chuck roast. The beef roast needs to have good marbling to be tender. Top sirloin, bottom round, and rump roasts are commonly recommended but may be too lean to shred well.
The onions can be standard yellow or white onions. Instead of chopping the onions, cut them into rings and then cut them in half.
The cooking fluid combines beef broth, caramelized onions, and garlic. Soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce enhance the beef's taste. After cooking, the liquid contains the meat juices and is the au jus for dipping.
Other seasonings, such as oregano or thyme, may be added. You can also use garlic powder instead of fresh garlic.
Use provolone cheese or other mild cheese. Other choices are discussed in the FAQs.
🍴How to serve French dip
Serve on toasted French bread, hoagies, or sub-buns with provolone or other cheese. Toast the buns and brown the cheese using an oven broiler and a baking sheet. You can also go smaller and make French dip sliders.
The au jus, French for “with juice,” is the cooking fluid and juice from the beef. It is used for dipping.
Serve with a salad, French Onion Soup, Baked French Fries, potato chips, Creamy One-Pot Mac and Cheese, or Microwave Corn on the Cob.
❄️What to do with leftover French dip
Shred meat and au jus should be stored separately in airtight containers. They can be stored in the refrigerator for 4 days or in the freezer for 3 months.
Reheat after thawing, if frozen, in a saucepan with the au jus cooking liquid or beef broth.
❓FAQs
Use a mild creamy cheese for French Dip Sandwiches like provolone, Swiss, Havarti, or Monterey Jack.
Monterey Jack or mozzarella cheese would also be good choices, but avoid intensely flavored cheeses like sharp cheddar, which will mask the flavor of your sandwich.
No, it is American. While there is some dispute about who developed it, French dip, named for French bread, originated in San Francisco in the early 1900s.
French Dip is made with thinly sliced or shredded beef braised in a cooking sauce and served with au jus.
Italian Beef is also braised but has Italian herbs and spices for a distinctive Italian taste.
This recipe works fine in a full-size and 3 to 4-quart small crock pot. It will not fit in a 2-quart mini crock pot.
📖The Recipe Card with Step-by-Step Instructions
Crock Pot French Dip Recipe
Video Slideshow
Ingredients
- 2-3 pounds chuck roast
- 2 onions - large sliced
- 4 teaspoons oil - for bowning
- 2 cloves garlic - crushed
- 2 cups beef broth - low sodium
- ¼ cup soy sauce - low sodium
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- salt and pepper to taste
- Hoagie buns
- Provolone cheese
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Start with a nicely trimmed, well-marbleized chuck roast—salt and pepper to taste.
- In a large skillet over medium-high heat, add two teaspoons of oil, and when hot, brown the roast for about 3 minutes per side. Then move the roast to the crock pot.
- Add 2 large sliced onions with the rings cut in half to the pan and cook for a few minutes until browning some. Then add 2 cloves of crushed garlic and cook one more minute. Move to the crock pot.
- Add 2 cups low-sodium beef broth, ¼ cup low-sodium soy sauce, and 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce—mix well.
- Cook on low for 5 hours, then remove meat and slice across the grain into ½-inch slices.
- Return to the crock pot to cook for 2 more hours until 200° plus.
- Break up the slices at the end of cooking to make serving easier.
- To serve, cut hoagie rolls into half and briefly toast. Top the bottom half with meat and provolone cheese—cook under a broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is nicely brown.
- Serve with the cooking solution as au jus for dipping.
Recipe Notes
Pro Tips:
- This is an easy recipe to adjust both in size and taste.
- Avoid a roast with too much connective tissue, which you will need to remove later. The beef choice is up to you. My favorite is an English-cut chuck roast. The recipe post discusses other choices.
- The crock pot must be big enough for the beef to have some space around it.
- Browning the beef before adding it to the crock pot will add good flavor to the beef.
- Cook and brown the onion a bit before adding it to the crock pot.
- Cut the beef across the grain.
- You can use any cheese you like, but provolone is my first choice, followed by Swiss, Havarti, or Monterey Jack. Avoid strong cheeses like sharp cheddar.
- Leftovers can be refrigerated for 3-4 days or frozen for up to 3 months. The au jus should be stored separately from the meat.
Your Own Private Notes
To adjust the recipe size:
You can adjust the number of servings above; however, only the amount in the ingredient list is adjusted, not the instructions.
Nutrition Estimate (may vary)
Originally published March 12, 2016. Updated with expanded options, refreshed photos, and a table of contents to help navigation.
JM says
To modify this recipe for a Instapot do I still have to remove meat partway through cooking and slice across the grain into ½-inch slices then return to the pot to cook or do I just cook it all at once? How would the times be adjusted?
Dan Mikesell AKA DrDan says
Hi JM,
Welcome to the blog.
I'm not an instapot user—I gave my away since I almost never used it. It was just a more fussy way of cooking that I didn't enjoy. I cook to make myself smile. It took the fun away for me. And I needed the storage space.
The slicing is not required. It allows the braising fluid to flavor the center of the roast while making cooking a bit faster and shreeding better. Most recipes do not do the slicing, so you can skip it and deal with any long strands of beef later.
Time of cooking a small roast in the pressure cooker to a good shredding temp of 200° plus is the real question. I have no answer. There should be some specific instapot recipes you can reference.
Sorry, I'm not much help.
Dan
Karen says
Hi Dr. Dan-
I can't tell you how happy I am I found your blog! My dad is a recent widower and wanted to start making crock pot meals this winter, but didn't want the huge recipes. He loves leftovers, but having some smaller recipe alternatives will be great for him.
I'm going to print off all your recipes for him and buy him a smaller crockpot. Here's my question. I have read through many of the recipes and it seems like 3.5 quarts would fit almost all of them, does that seem accurate to you? I like that you have them written so there won't be waste, even if they are a little bigger number of servings. He'd hate having half a jar/can of something left.
Thanks so much in advance!
Dan Mikesell AKA DrDan says
Hi Karen,
Welcome to the blog.
For years I used a 3.5 quart Cuisinart that is still going strong. So the older, not rewritten, recipes may still say 3.5 quart. Read that as 3 to 4 quart small crock pots. Many of my rewrites also have instructions for 2 quart mini crock pots. I much prefer people get the 3-4 quart size vs the mini since they are much more flexable eliminating waste. You can generally (not always) cook smaller recipes in larger crock pot but they may cook a bit faster. Also, to truly cook a recipe (like raw meat or vegetables) the pot should not be over 75% full.
Hope that helps.
Dan