Rhenish Sauerbraten

Marcel Kokot’s Rheinischer Sauerbraten at WDR combines marinated beef and a Printen-thickened sauce with its own filled potato dumplings and creamy savoy cabbage. This selected recipe follows the sieve-finished sauce route and preserves the source’s separate side preparations.

Red wine, marinade water, red-wine vinegar, mustard seeds, generic peppercorns, bay leaves, sugar and marinade salt mix together. The beef rests in this marinade in a cool place for six to twelve hours. It is lifted out and the same marinade strained through a sieve. Generic oil heats in a roasting vessel to sear the beef all round; carrot, celery stalk and onion are coarsely cubed and fried with it.

The retained marinade deglazes the roast and comes to the boil. A lid covers two to two and a half hours of gentle braising. Printen are coarsely crumbled and stirred into the sauce until they dissolve. The beef is removed and the sauce passed through the selected straining route.

For the dumplings, washed potatoes bake at 180°C for thirty-five minutes and pass through a potato press. Generic flour, the listed supplied yolks and their seasonings knead with them. Own peeled and diced shallots and apple fry in butter with thyme leaves and their seasonings for the filling. Sixty-gram dough portions spread in the palm, receive a spoonful of filling and close into balls. They enter two litres of salted water, briefly boil and then cook at reduced heat until they rise. An oiled sheet holds them before a pan coats them in its own golden-fried panko-and-butter mixture.

For the cabbage side, savoy strips blanch in boiling salted water for one to two minutes, enter supplied ice water, drain and are squeezed in the selected route. Supplied cubed bacon renders in a pan; most fat is drained away, leaving about one to two teaspoons, and the bacon is set aside. A separate pot melts béchamel butter, cooks generic flour in it for one to two minutes and receives milk gradually before boiling and gently thickening. Its seasonings finish the sauce. The savoy reheats in the retained bacon fat, with an optional extra teaspoon of butter if needed, then the same bacon and béchamel combine with it.