Sauerbraten With Potato Dumplings

Somebody sent me a bottom-round beef roast, and the first thing I thought of was sauerbraten, one of the great national dishes of Germany. It's a tough, usually pretty lean piece of meat that's soaked in vinegar for a week and then braised soft. The incredible sweet-and-sour gravy is thickened with cookies. Yes, cookies. I made some potato dumplings with these — kartoffelklöss. I'll show you how to do those. Like most great traditional recipes, there's a million different ways to do it. These are the ingredients I have today. They're all swappable for something else. This is a 2.5 pound bottom-round roast, a little over a kilo. It'll feed four, at least. But pretty much any tough, lean roast will do it. Any form of onion will do it. Lots of traditional recipes call for both onion and leeks. I don't understand that because leek is a kind of onion, but do whatever you want. I've got two small onions chunked up. Into a pot they go. Couple of carrots. No need to peel or cut precisely. All of these will get strained out later. Same deal with the celery, and some people don't use celery at all. It doesn't matter. Just get some aromatics in the pot. I've also got some garlic in there too. A stick of rosemary. Again, it's kind of whatever you have, whatever spices you want. Juniper berries are very characteristic of sauerbraten to me, but only use a few. Super strong. Same deal with cloves. Bay leaves will either overwhelm everything or taste like nothing at all. I really have no idea. Red wine vinegar — classic, but almost any vinegar would be fine. And recipes usually call for like one part vinegar to every four or five parts of other liquid, and we'll need enough to submerge the roast, so I'm starting with that whole bottle of vinegar. Then I have only the finest month-old boxed red wine. Legend has it that sauerbraten was Roman beef shipped inside casks of red wine that probably went sour on its own. I guess I'm doing double the amount of vinegar than I did. Whenever I braise in red wine, I like to cut it with a lot of stock or water, otherwise it's too strong in the end. You don't need stock. That was just half a box of chicken stock that I had sitting in the fridge. There's some water coming, but not yet. I want to bring this to a boil first. Very traditional step. This dissolves some flavor out of the spices and aromatics, it sterilizes everything in here for the long marination to come, and it boils away some of the harshest notes of the vinegar or the wine. I suspect a modern sauerbraten recipe would work just fine without the boiling of the marinade first, but I don't feel like testing that today. Give that a taste. It should taste too acidic, but not repulsively so. I'll balance the vinegar with a little honey or other sugar. This will get some noticeable sweet taste inside the meat. And then I'll salt this a bit, just get it to where it tastes like overly acidic soup broth. Just season it to taste. I need to cool this off, and I need more water, so ice cubes. Enough to give me enough liquid to just submerge the meat. When they stop immediately melting, the liquid is cool enough. In goes the raw beef roast, and I need more liquid, so I'll just top off with water. I can boil it out later. Note that I'm doing this in enameled cast iron. You could transfer all of this to a plastic bag or something. Just don't marinate this inside a bare metal vessel, because the acid could leach out a bunch of metal as this sits in the refrigerator for at least a couple of days. Some people go beyond a week. This has been in there six days. That much vinegar for that much time will break down meat. This is already soft on the surface. I have to be careful to not tear it. Knock off any vegetables, and then I'll dry that off on a towel so that I can brown it. Is it just me or does it feel lighter? Yeah, that lost like four ounces in the soaking, but nothing in the gravy will go to waste. A little oil in a hot pan and just brown the roast. More or less on all sides, but you don't need to be crazy about it. Red wine marinades can make it kinda tough to gauge browning by eye, so use your nose and turn the heat down if it smells like anything is burning. I'm paying special attention to that little fat cap the butcher left on this roast. I want to render as much of that fat out, and I want to get the surface crispy and delicious. Back this goes into my cold marinade, believe it or not. You could just deglaze that pan with a little water and add that to the marinade, but I'm gonna brown a little potato starch in that fat to make a roux. You could use wheat flour. Potato starch browns especially nice, and it'll add a thickening power to the gravy. Just deglaze everything with water. Scrape up all the yummy brown stuff. I don't care if there are lumps because they're gonna dissolve as this simmers a few hours until the meat is soft. You could do it on the stovetop, but I'm doing it in the oven at like 300 F, 150 C is a good temperature for both the beef and for these baking potatoes, with which I will make my dumplings. Just gotta wait a while. Maybe make myself a cup of coffee from Trade, sponsor of this video. Get a free bag of coffee with any subscription purchase at drinktrade.com slash ragusea. What kind of coffee does Trade have? None. They're not a coffee warehouse. They're a coffee discovery service. They comb the United States for the best independent coffee roasters. They sample tons of stuff, and from that, Trade selects some dark roasts, some light roasts, some espressos, some blends, some rare stuff — all to keep a surprising, delighting feed of red-bagged coffee coming straight to your door at the schedule that you prefer. And it's the coffee you prefer, curated for your particular tastes and roasted to order. Trade's partner roasters commit to shipping all bags within 48 hours of roasting, and man, freshness makes a difference with coffee. My Trade subscription basically taught me how to choose and brew and drink coffee, and it's been such an addition to my life. Get your own curated coffee feed on the way to your mailbox. Get a free bag with any subscription at drinktrade.com slash ragusea in the description. Thank you, Trade. OK, after two or three hours at that relatively low temperature, the potatoes are finally squishably soft. Take them out, pop them open to steam out and cool. When I can handle them, I will scoop them out, smash up all the really big chunks, discard the skins and then season. I'll eyeball some salt. Be conservative, cuz I can taste this when it's stirred up. I believe nutmeg would be the traditional spice, but my American innovation is gonna be some garlic and onion powder instead. Makes nearly any bland, wet mixture taste way better. Crack on an egg, for richness and binding. Scatter on some potato starch or flour or breadcrumbs. Anything dry and starchy and absorbent to make this just come together into a dough. I'll beat that egg with my finger before I start folding. If you overmix, or if you add too much starch, the dumplings are gonna be rubbery. Just bring it together until it'll barely hold the shape of a ball. Roll them into little golf balls, and when you're ready, you can boil them in salted water, until they float is a pretty good guide. Just about 10 minutes. I'll drain these through the lid, and then you can melt in a little butter, toss them in it, and then you can hold these covered on warm for hours. I've had this roast going for four hours. That should be more than enough. I'll test with a fork. The acid marinade has made the outer centimeter or so very soft, so you have to push it to the core to get a sense of how soft the whole roast is. That's actually softer than I wanted it, but it'll be fine. Pull it out, bring the marinade back up to a boil, and I'll reduce that by half or so, just to intensify the gravy and to calm down the vinegar some more. The Southern German tradition, I believe, is to thicken this gravy with Christmas spice cookies. The best bet we've got for that here in the States is ginger snaps. We might actually use all of those. It's a lot. I'ma smash those up in a towel so they dissolve faster, but honestly, you could just throw the cookies in whole. They'll break up and dissolve, and any chunks will strain out in a sec. Just stir in handfuls of cookie crumbs and boil to dissolve until you've got the gravy as thick as you want it. I want it really thick, because the meat is gonna be dry on its own. It needs a lot of thick sauce coating every single fiber. Grab a bowl and a sieve and it's time to strain out all the vegetables and the lumps and everything. Just grind away at the solids with a wooden spoon and all of that delicious gravy will come out the other end. Have a taste, and we're gonna need some more salt and lots of pepper to balance all that sugar from the cookies. Stir that in, and we've got a huge quantity of the most delicious sweet and sour gravy. Make a lot of potatoes and such to soak up all this gravy. I'll chop up some parsley for garnish. Curly parsley always feels more German to me than flat-leaf parsley, though I have no idea if it actually is. Time to slice the roast, and don't be dismayed when you see the inside. It's gonna look dry and mealy. It's dry on the inside because it's a lean piece of meat, and long-acid marinades make meat fibers shred apart from each other like that. It's honestly a little gross if you eat the meat by itself. It's meant to be enrobed in this luscious sauce, so do not skimp on it. The meat is fall-apart tender. It's noticeably a little sour on the inside from the vinegar. The potato dumplings are the real star, though — surprisingly light and pillowy, and that gravy just compliments them so well. A hearty dish from hearty people. Ja gut!