I spent the better part of last week marinating a 4.5 pound beef rump roast in order to make sauerbraten for my Sunday dinner for company. It turned out–in a word–terrible. I’m not sure where it went off the rails, but no one wanted seconds on that meat, and some of us couldn’t even choke down our firsts.
At the end of the evening, I still had about 3.5 pounds of meat left over. The recipe for manicotti I am sharing today is one that was born out of some desperation because I really didn’t want to have to toss all that meat. The main problem was that in spite of having marinated the meat for days and then braised it for hours, it was dry–and I mean dry as dust! And kinda stringy. And…kinda sour… I mean, duh–sauerbraten–am I telling you something?
I needed to find a way to add moisture to the meat to make it into something that didn’t stick in your gullet on the way down and to neutralize the overall sourness of the meat.
I decided to make a filling for manicotti out of it. Ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese and an egg added some much-needed moisture to the meat, and Italian spices and some salt took some of the edge off the sourness. After that, I hoped that any residual dryness and sourness would be further alleviated by the the basic tomato sauce that I used to top the dish.
The result is a very serviceable recipe for any leftover beef (or really, pretty much any leftover meat) with which you might find yourself. The sauerbraten did still result in a filling that was a little more sweet/sour than I would have liked, but it was far more enjoyable as a filling for manicotti than it was as a main dish on its own.
Manicotti with leftover meat stuffing:
Please note, I usually have some of the basic tomato sauce on hand in my freezer, which made this meal pretty quick to throw together. If you don’t have any basic tomato sauce on hand, you can make this Keri’s quick tomato sauce and still have dinner on the table in about an hour.
Enjoy!
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
