Home › Steer Beef and Veal › Sweet and Sour Beef
Sweet and Sour Beef
I 1/2 POUNDS LEAN BEEF I BAY LEAF I SMALL ONION I CUP GINGER SNAPS BROKEN I TEASPOON WHOLE MIXED SPICE 1/2 CUP VINEGAR SALT AND PEPPER 1/2 LEMON Cut beef in 2-inch pieces, put in pan and cover with cold water, cook slowly until tender, then add bay leaf, onion, spice, vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. When meat is thoroughly cooked thicken broth with the ginger snaps and cook until gravy is smooth; add juice of lemon last.
A stovetop sauerbraten in miniature: the beef is simmered rather than marinated, and the sauce is thickened with crushed gingersnaps in the German fashion. The whole dish comes together in one pan in about two hours.
- The hinge: gingersnaps as thickenerCrush the cookies fine and stir them in a handful at a time off a hard boil, or they clump. Give the sauce five to ten minutes to dissolve them fully and smooth out; if it stays grainy, a brief whisk or a pass through a sieve fixes it.
- QuantitiesThe list reads 1 1/2 lb lean beef, 1 bay leaf, 1 small onion, 1 cup broken gingersnaps, 1 teaspoon whole mixed spice, 1/2 cup vinegar, salt and pepper, and 1/2 lemon.
- Cut of beef"Lean beef" for a long simmer suggests chuck, shin or bottom round. The recipe gives no time, only "cook slowly until tender"; modern lean cuts sold for quick cooking are likely to dry out over a long simmer, where chuck stays succulent.
- Whole mixed spiceProbably a whole pickling-type blend; such mixes commonly included mustard seed, allspice, coriander, peppercorns, cloves and a little cinnamon, sometimes dried chile, though proportions varied. A jar of pickling spice will stand in. Tying it in muslin or a tea ball lets you lift it out before thickening.
- VinegarHalf a cup of the sharp white or cider vinegar of the day. Taste before committing all of it, and add the last of it at the end if the sauce needs lifting; the gingersnaps carry sugar and will offset some of the acid.
- Timing and heat"Cook slowly" implies a bare simmer rather than a boil, until a fork slides in easily; how long depends on the cut. Note the order: the beef is simmered tender first, and only then do the bay leaf, onion, spice and vinegar go in, so the aromatics get a comparatively short time in the pot.
- The lemon lastThe juice goes in at the very end, which keeps its brightness; long boiling tends to dull citrus to a flat sourness.
- YieldNo yield is given; 1 1/2 lb of beef would serve about four. Egg noodles, spaetzle or boiled potatoes take the sauce well, with red cabbage alongside.
This reads as sauerbraten reduced to its essentials. The classic Rhineland version marinates a joint of beef for several days in vinegar and spice before braising, and finishes the gravy with crushed Lebkuchen or gingersnaps, whose sugar, spice and starch balance the sour marinade. Here the marinade step disappears entirely and the vinegar simply goes into the pot with the aromatics. Gingersnaps as a thickener are associated with German cooks in nineteenth-century America, and the shortcut appears in community cookbooks from the Midwest and Pennsylvania; commercially packaged snaps would have made it easier still.