„Sauerbraten“ is a typical German
dish—I think. Maybe it's regional, but it seems that most regions have a variant. And that
makes it really difficult to find a typical recipe. Potentially it doesn't matter, but it
would be nice to get something representative.
I have one recipe in my ancient Time-Life cookbook „Die Küche in Deutschland“, a translation
of a 1969 English language book whose title they decline to mention. In general the series
isn't bad, but some of the details puzzled me, so I went looking elsewhere.
What a mess! Once again I came to the conclusion that it's really difficult to find
a good recipe on the web. In the end I came up with this recipe from Chefkoch, which has its own strangenesses (“½ litre
raspberry vinegar, preferably home-made”). And like the other recipe, it wanted the
marinade boiled.
The quantities are always an issue, but in this case they're extreme. Time-Life shows its
origins by using tablespoons and
cups, and it wanted to brown the meat
in fat before marinating, which seemed wrong to me. So I started with the other one—and it,
too, wanted a tablespoon each of salt and sugar. The other quantities were even more
unbalanced:
Time-Life
Chefkoch
Meat
2 kg
1 kg
Wine for marinade
125 ml
750 ml
Vinegar for marinade
125 ml
500 ml
Water for marinade
500 ml
Marinade (total)
750 ml
1250 ml
Marinade (per kg meat)
375 ml
1250 ml
Marinate for
2-3 days
3 weeks
I'm sure that the spice quantities are different too, but since they go by count rather than
weight, it's hard to say. In the end I went for the Chefkoch recipe and modified it to my
liking (including considerably more spices) and with a view to consistency.
Ingredients
quantity
ingredient
step
750 ml
red wine
1
500 ml
vinegar
1
250 g
onion, sliced in rings
1
100 g
carrot, in slices
1
5 g
juniper
1
2 g
allspice
1
2 g
cloves
1
2 g
bay leaves
1
25 g
salt
1
25 g
sugar
1
1.4 kg
beef topside,lean
2
40 g
beef dripping
3
100 g
onion
4
100 g
carrot
4
100 g
celery
4
Preparation
Slice onion and carrot as described, crush the juniper in a mortar. Put all ingredients
in the liquid, bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Allow to cool.
When the marinade is cool, add the meat and ensure that it's covered by the marinade.
Leave in the fridge for some while.
Following week: remove the meat from the marinade and dry. Brown in the dripping from
all sides:
Put in 600 ml of the marinade, bring to the boil. Add the meat and bake in oven at 170°
for up to two hours. I've found that that's pretty much the outer limit for beef
topside, which comes out very tender.
