I gotta share it all, right? The successes as well as the failures. I made Sauerbraten last night–for company, no less–and it was an abject failure.
Sauerbraten is the national dish of Germany. Its history is a little murky, but legend has it that Julius Caesar sent containers with sauerbraten over the Alps to Cologne. After that, the Colognians liberally copied the dish and a new tradition was born.
The dish involves taking a tough piece of meat, usually beef rump roast, and marinating it in wine, vinegar and spices such as juniper berries, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaves, and the like, for a very long time–and I mean a LONG time. One recipe I found had you marinate the meat for two weeks–just say “ick.” Most recipes have you marinate for 4-7 days. I marinated my Sauerbraten for 5 days, which seemed a happy medium. After the period of marination, you sear and then slow cook the meat in its marinade and juices for a long time, after which you are supposed to end up with a melt-in-your-mouth treat for the senses. Spoiler alert–this did not happen with my Sauerbraten.
Sauerbraten literally means “sour meat” or “sour roast.” Marinating the meat with acids like wine and vinegar for a long time will tenderize this tough piece of meat and then cooking it for a long time, should further flavor and tenderize the meat. Whatever the origins, today, the dish remains as the national dish of Germany, and what better way to celebrate Oktoberfest than with Sauerbraten? Well…at least that’s what I thought last week…
I can only believe that I must have done something very wrong because my sauerbraten was terrible.
After 5 days of marinating a 4.5 pound rump roast and faithfully turning the meat so as to make sure the whole roast was equally in contact with the marinade, I seared it and then put everything into my slow cooker to cook for a total of 8 hours–partially on high to get the whole thing up to temperature, and then about 6 hours on low.
I invited my dear friend over to share in this repast. Thank goodness he’s eaten my cooking dozens and dozens of times because my careful and meticulously planned treatment of this meat yielded a slightly sour, tough, dry mouthful of rather bland stringy mulch.
So, my readers–surely Sauerbraten can be good! Please help! Please respond with your suggestions for how to make my sour meat failure into a success!
I still have about 3.5 pounds of meat left over. I have pondered over the best way to use this sour pile of mulch. Right now, the only thing that has occurred to me that might help it out is the addition of bacon. Bacon makes everything better, right? Frankly, even bacon is going to have a heavy lift to rescue this epic failure. We’ll see.
I’m not even going to share the recipe today because I wouldn’t want to pass on a recipe that produced such bad results. However, I will pass on any recipes I come up with that may rescue the leftovers–after all, that’s what The Stone Soup Cook is all about–creative recipes for resourceful cooks!
Thanks for visiting today and I hope you’re having a great day–tune in later this week for more recipes and stories from The Stone Soup Cook–until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
