Take a 5-pound beef roast. Rub with salt and black pepper and paprica; pour over some boiling vinegar; add 2 bay-leaves, a few peppercorns and cloves. Let stand over night. Heat 2 tablespoonfuls of dripping in a saucepan; lay in the meat with 2 sliced onions. Let stew slowly with one cup of water and ½ cup of the spiced vinegar until tender. Thicken the sauce with flour and serve hot with potato pancakes.
This is sauerbraten in its shortest possible form — a one-night marinade rather than the traditional three or four days. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to braise, so the useful additions are the missing quantities, the cut, and the marinating conditions.
- The cut matters more than the recipe says"Beef roast" here means a braising cut: bottom round, rump or chuck, 4–5 lb boneless and tied. A tender oven-roasting cut will turn dry and stringy over the long slow stew.
- Marinate in the refrigerator"Let stand over night" was written for a cool larder or icebox. Put the meat and its hot vinegar in a non-reactive bowl or a zip bag, let it cool, and refrigerate it. One night gives a mild tang; two to three days gives the sourness most people expect from sauerbraten.
- How much vinegarNo quantity is given. Enough to half-submerge a 5 lb roast is perhaps 2 cups, and it is worth cutting it with an equal amount of water or red wine, since modern distilled vinegar at 5 percent acidity is harsher than older cask vinegars. The recipe pours the vinegar over boiling and adds the bay, peppercorns and cloves afterwards; either order works.
- DrippingBeef dripping is the rendered fat from a previous roast. Any beef fat, lard or neutral oil works; use it to brown the meat hard on all sides before the onions go in, which the recipe skips but which supplies most of the colour and flavour.
- "Paprica"Sweet paprika, used generously as a rub. It is there for colour and mild sweetness, not heat, so hot paprika changes the dish.
- Stew slowlyCovered, at a bare simmer on the lowest burner; the recipe is a stovetop saucepan dish, though a low oven works as a modern substitute. A 5 lb round takes 3 to 3 and a half hours; it is done when a fork slides in and twists freely, not at any fixed clock time.
- Thickening the sauceStrain out the whole spices, then whisk 2–3 tablespoons of flour into a little cold water or soft butter and stir it into the simmering liquid, or use a roux made in a separate pan. Crushed gingersnaps are the classic German alternative and thicken and sweeten at once.
- YieldA 5 lb roast serves 8 to 10. It slices better and tastes better the next day, when the meat has cooled in its sauce.
This is sauerbraten -- literally "sour roast" -- a German method for making a tough, hard-working cut of beef edible by steeping it in spiced vinegar and then braising it for hours. Acid marinades are often said to have served as preservation as much as seasoning in kitchens without reliable cold storage, though how far the sourness descends from that practice is not settled. Regional versions differ in how they finish the sauce, with Rhineland versions associated with raisins and gingersnaps; this one takes the plain flour route. The pairing with potato pancakes, rather than the dumplings or red cabbage more usual in Germany, and the single overnight marinade instead of several days both suggest a recipe adapted for an American household, in keeping with a collection offering one foreign dish per day in a form a domestic cook could manage on ordinary notice.