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Sauer-Braten
(Germany.) Steep a good-sized piece of beef in vinegar for 2 days. Drain it, lard it with bacon, dust it with mixed spices ground fine, salt, and pepper, and brown it in melted butter or dripping. Add them 2 carrots, and 2 onions sliced, a bayleaf, parsley, thyme, and sweet marjoram, also the rind of a lemon, and 1 pint of boiling water. Simmer, covered, for 3 hours. Take out the meat, skim the gravy, add vinegar to taste, thicken it with a little flour, then strain, and pour over the meat Serve with sauer-kraut.
A compressed but complete sauerbraten: long acid marinade, larding, a browned pot roast, and a strained sour gravy. The one thing the recipe does not tell you is how strong the vinegar should be, and that is the decision the whole dish turns on.
- Dilute the vinegarHousehold vinegar of the period was commonly cider or wine vinegar and its strength varied; modern supermarket vinegar is standardised at 5 percent and over two days can turn the outside of the meat grey and mealy. Use roughly half vinegar to half red wine or water, enough to cover the meat two-thirds of the way.
- Marinate cold"Steep for 2 days" assumed a cold larder or cellar. Marinate in the refrigerator in a non-reactive container — glass, glazed stoneware, or a zip bag — turning the meat once or twice a day.
- The cut"A good-sized piece of beef" means a firm braising joint: bottom round, rump, or chuck, 3 to 4 lb, tied into a compact shape so it cooks evenly.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of fat pork or bacon through the meat with a larding needle. Barding — tying thin bacon or sheets of fat over the surface — gives most of the benefit and needs no special tool.
- "Mixed spices ground fine"For this dish that means the German pickling group: black pepper, allspice, cloves, juniper berries, a little mustard seed, sometimes mace. A teaspoon or so of the blend on a 4 lb joint is plenty.
- Dry before browningMeat straight out of vinegar will steam rather than brown. Pat it thoroughly dry and get the fat properly hot before it goes in; the browned crust is where most of the gravy's colour and depth comes from.
- Lemon rindPare it thin with no white pith, or the sauce turns bitter over three hours of simmering.
- The simmerThree hours at a bare simmer, covered, is about right for 3 to 4 lb, on the stovetop or in a 325F oven. Judge by feel rather than the clock — a skewer should slide in with no resistance.
- ThickeningFlour stirred into the skimmed gravy works, but a common German finish is crushed gingersnaps or dark rye breadcrumbs, which thicken and sweeten at once and balance the vinegar. Note that the recipe adds vinegar to taste before thickening and straining, so taste the sauce again at the end.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb joint serves six, sliced thin across the grain. With sauerkraut, potatoes or dumplings, it stretches to eight.
Sauerbraten is simply "sour roast." Steeping tough meat in vinegar both preserved and tenderised it in kitchens without refrigeration, and this is commonly given as the origin of the dish, though it is traditional explanation rather than documented fact. Regional German versions differ mostly in the souring liquid and the thickener — Rhineland cooks lean on wine and raisins, and the gingersnap or Lebkuchen finish is generally traced to that same western tradition. The country heading places the entry in the genre of national-dish collections popular around the turn of the twentieth century; the entries are short and reduce a dish to its skeleton, which is why the vinegar strength, the size of the joint and the serving numbers are all left to the reader. In Germany the usual accompaniments are potato dumplings, spaetzle or red cabbage as well as sauerkraut.