Sauerbraten! The King of the Winter Roasts!

By Desiree Haight

Behold the mighty Sauerbraten! King of the Winter Roasts!

Sauerbraten Sunday Roast
(and yes it takes 3 days to make!)
(sour-bra-ten)

I seem to crave this roast in the darkest days of Winter and this March is no exception. With the weather in Canada turning cold this week I think I’ll make this amazing comfort roast.  There are a lot of ingredients and it takes a fair amount of time, but nothing good ever came easy, amiright?!!

This is what you’ll need for ingredients

2 cups water
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup red wine vinegar
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt, additional for seasoning meat
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
6 whole cloves
12 juniper berries
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 (3 1/2 to 4-pound) bottom round beef roast
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/3 cup sugar
18 dark old-fashioned gingersnaps (about 5 ounces), crushed
1/2 cup seedless raisins, optional

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/sauerbraten-recipe/index.html

In a medium saucepan measure out

Start with one cup of apple cider vinegar

And 1 cup of red wine vinegar

Mustard seeds can be found at most regular grocery stores

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

Aah bay leaves, don’t even bother if you don’t have these little beauties

Whole cloves

And the veggies, use good carrots not those stubby flavourless ones.

Juniper berries were a little tougher to find but The Cookbook Company always comes through. Williams and Sonoma has them too.

Bring the marinade to a boil and simmer for 25 minutes, them cool.

Salt and pepper your roast really well before you sear it off. This is probably the most important step you have in this recipe because searing the roast builds a ton of flavour and helps keep the meat really moist during slow roasting.

Oh yeah!

This is the weird part of this recipe, usually you would pop the roast in the oven on low for 4 hours to finish cooking. With Sauerbraten you marinade the partially cooked roast in your cooled marinade for three days!

Add 1/4 cup of sugar after you combine the roast and marinade

After 3 days I popped it in the oven at 325 degrees marinade and all for 4 hours. Take the roast out and wrap in foil to keep hot.

Then strain your cooked marinade

Strained marinade

There’s another fun part to this recipe, you use pulverised Ginger Snaps to thicken the marinade into a gravy

I use Anna’s Ginger Thins

Whizz them up or smash them

Whisk into the gravy and you are ready to serve, oh and I skipped the raisins just because.

Yes it took three days to make, but can you tell my the gleam in my eye if it was worth it?