Rheinischer Sauerbraten

I was asked about the recipe and didn't realize it would take me over an hour to find translations for ingredients.

Translating the meat cuts and the vinegar type was the most difficult. I hope someone makes this after all that work.

It is satisfying to be able to tell your husband that dinner took 5 days to make!

This is my mother in law's version of what is often called the national dish of Germany. Written with permssion. Photographs not mine.

Rheinischer Sauerbraten

3-4 pounds beef --bottom round or chuck blade roast

----marinade:
one liter of vinegar* (you'll need more vinegar later)
2 large chopped onions
1 TBS mustard seeds
3-4 bay leaves
4 whole cloves
4 whole allspice ("berries")
salt
pepper
----

canola oil or lard
1 tsp sugar
few TBS flour or sauce thickener of your choice
2 TBS apple butter**
one grated apple


1. Combine marinade ingredients in saucepan. Use one liter of vinegar, you'll need more later.

2. Shut your kitchen door and open your kitchen windows. Turn your oven vent on full power. This isn't gonna smell good.

3. Heat marinade to nearly a boil, remove from heat and set aside to cool a while. It doesn't have to be room temperature, but it shouldn't be burning hot.

4. Find a lidded non-reactive pot (plastic or ceramic), place the roast inside.

5. Pour the marinade over the roast. Close the lid and put it in the fridge for 5 days. If the meat isn't completely covered by the liquid, turn the meat every day.

6. During those 5 days try to procure traditional side dishes. Or learn to make them - Klöße (potato dumplings) and Rotkohl (sweet cooked red cabbage).

7. Take the meat out and dry it with a paper towel. Let it sit a couple hours until it's room temperature.

8. Find your largest saucepan with a lid. Heat lard or oil til it bubbles. This will be messy - you might not want to wear your church clothes.

9. On high heat, lay the meat in the saucepan and sear it, turning repeatedly.

10. Take the onions out of the marinade and add them to the saucepan.

11. Add 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp sugar.

12. ACHTUNG: Repeat step 2.

13. Ladel some marinade into the pan until it's 1 cm deep.

14. Reduce and repeat #13 twice, deglazing the pan around/under the meat with a spoon or fork.

15. Pour the rest of the marinade over the meat and bring to a boil.

16. Drop heat to medium and cover. Let it simmer for 2 hours, adding more vinegar if necessary.

17. Take meat temp to ensure it's done and remove meat from the pan.

18. Turn up heat and boil marinade.

19. Stirring constantly, add flour or sauce thickener.

20. Add apple butter and apple.

21. Add salt, pepper, water as needed.

22. Pour sauce through a sieve over a serving dish to remove solids.

23. Cut up meat and place back in sauce.

Serve with German beer or wine. Even better: serve it with a Seattle-produced microbrew.


* The vinegar type is important and took some research. This recipe calls for Weinbranntessig. This is what the Englanders call spirit vinegar. What we might call "brandy wine vinegar." It is also known as table vinegar, is produced from diluted spirits, which have been distilled from sugar cane molasses, cereals or potatoes. I use Wein-Branntweinessig (!?): Wine-flavoured vinegar or wine-spirit vinegar made from a combination of spirit vinegar with 20 to 40 % wine vinegar.

Many Sauerbraten recipes call for wine in the marinade, I guess that explains the type of vinegar we use here. This is incidentally the cheapest and most common vinegar, I use it for cleaning tasks including hooves.
**Apple butter looks different from the called-for Apfelkraut when I did some research. I don't know how different these two things are, though my German English dictionary translates them directly.

Note: Typical Rheinland Sauerbraten often contains raisins by my family does not make it that way. My husband doesn't eat rotkohl so his mom gives him applesauce instead. I think the idea is that you should have something sweet next to it.

Scary note: Traditionally this was made with horse meat. We don't do that here.