welcome to my kitchen and a new episode right now I'm gonna start making my dinner which is gonna go in the crock-pot again mm-hmm and we're gonna make a sauerbraten stew now for those of you who may not be familiar with what sauerbraten is sauerbraten is a wonderful german dish that's made with really um not so nice to eat piece of beef you can make this with a with a bottom round you can make it with a tips tip roast or something like that something that needs to be cooked low slow and for a long time because you want to break down all those fibers but the beautiful part about sauerbraten is actually like you know as the name might suggest like sauerkraut sauerbraten is somewhat of a pickled meat but a traditional sauerbraten is something that takes seven to ten days in a marinade much like corned beef but different flavors you know corned beef has his water sugar salt and all of these other wonderful spices sauerbraten the base of a marinade for Sauron is red wine vinegar or just some apple cider vinegar so that's what you start with but I thought you know there's got to be a way that we can have something similar to sauerbraten and have all those delicious flavors but make us too because you know big ol hunks of meat are expensive and stew meat was on sale so I got some I'm thinking what can I make with this so this is what came to mind and I sat last night and I kind of developed this recipe based on how my grandmother used to make sauerbraten and in the very end there is kind of a super secret ingredient that is gonna blow your mind when we go to thicken the broth to make the gravy but first we're gonna start with marinating the meat we're gonna make this in the crock pot but we're gonna marinate it for only 15 minutes and then we're going to the other ingredients in this Senate to cook so let's see what goes in here I have just about three pounds of stew meat here and it um it was on sale for I paid oh I guess I paid 397 a pound but I don't think I did I think I pay less than that because I think the posted price was like 259 or something I knew I don't have to look at my receipt to find out but anyway I've got about three pounds of stew meat here and then we're going to start the marinade we're gonna use 1 cup of red wine vinegar I have a cup of sugar and all of these wonderful spices we're gonna use a tablespoon of pickling spice 2 or 3 bay leaves your choice a teaspoon of ground ginger I'm sorry a half a teaspoon of ground ginger 1/2 a teaspoon of ground clove quarter teaspoon of ground nutmeg you can use whole clove if you like just throw a teaspoon of whole clove in there if you want to just throw a knob of fresh ginger in there that's fine too as far as the nutmeg goes you can you can grade it yourself I pull up all these for my spice rack because it was easy later on when we're going to use 4 cups of water and I've got 2 tablespoons or may not use the whole amount of the bouillon powder we're going to put in a quarter cup of raisins these will sweeten the broth we're gonna drain the broth later when we make this sauce so these are gonna come out all they're gonna do is lend their flavor now what you might not know is that raisins are used as a flavoring and a lot of things like werster's your sauce has raisins ketchup has raisins they add a lot of sweetness and then a really nice base to those deep rich flavors we're also going to use a mirepoix we're gonna use carrot I've got about a 1 pound bag of baby carrots here if you didn't want to use baby carrots I'd use 4 to 5 large carrots that one inch in chunks to medium onions that we're going to slice and quarter and then I have four ribs of celery here that we're going to wash and break down and cut into 1-inch you know chunks so first things first let me get a small saucepan we're gonna work on the marinade sorry welcome to my kitchen what was that box Dartmouth well that was that was Cooper huh welcome to my nightmare yeah okay perhaps and shout outs Alice my man alright so I'm gonna start here we're gonna take our red wine vinegar I'm gonna measure out a cup and there's like a half a cup left in the bottle and I have a fresh bottle so I'm just gonna pour it in there this isn't rocket science or brain surgery this is just cooking so if you have a little bit left in that bottle just throw it in there because you know what's gonna happen it's gonna get stuff in the back of your pantry unless you use red wine vinegar every single day then here is our sugar yo and I'm gonna turn the heat on here medium-high what I want to do is I just want to get this a little bit warm so that this sugar dissolves and this is really kind of setting the brine I did not add any salt because we're using bullion powder if you want to add salt later after you taste it then that's when I would add the salt but right now I'm not going to add salt because this is gonna cook for a long time and those flavors are just going to intensify and the vinegar is already so strong and has saltiness to it that I just don't want to add any extra salt at this point so if any of you are wondering that that's why you can see that this is starting to warm up a little that sugar is starting to dissolve I can feel it under my spoon I can feel the smoothness of the bottom of the pan so that sugar is incorporating into that vinegar sauerbraten is a very traditional german dish it's traditionally served with your Spence all the potato dumplings and braised red cabbage I'm not gonna make the cabbage today but I think I might try my hand at some potato dumplings I'm not sure yet it depends on how the day plays out and what kind of time I have left at the end of the day so and if any of you have never had sauerbraten I highly suggest you seek out a good German restaurant in your area some of you may not have that available to you but there is nothing like an amazing piece of sauerbraten it just melts in your mouth it literally melts in your mouth you'll never taste anything like it in your life and it is just fabulous it's it's got the sweetness and this savory Ness and a little bit tart and it's just function and delicious and everybody should try at least once I was very spoiled my grandmother made this when I was a child when I became an adult she didn't make it that much but it's a happy memory for me so this is me trying to replicate something but make it a little bit easier and a little more budget-friendly so what I'm gonna do here is heating up I know hi but this is an idea that I got from Alton Brown who I adore uh when he makes his blinds for like any meat turkey pork his corned beef brine he will heat up a portion of it but then you know we have to do you need something baby okay um we have to cool it down before we actually put it on the meat otherwise we we really do risk bacterial growth so what we're gonna do is this is almost there I'm just gonna kick this up just a moment you don't really necessarily want this to boil but where it is right now is probably good enough so what a lot of times when you make a brine it calls for this sugar and the water and you know whatever else you're gonna put in there but now we have our vinegar and our sugar and which is clear and I don't see any grains in the bottom of that pot it's beautiful but this Brian would be vinegar and water along with the sugar and I'm gonna turn off now as I see it's starting to steam this we're gonna put in a cup of ice and I'm gonna take it off the heat and we're gonna wait for those ice foods to melt because this is going to lower the temperature of that vinegar and sugar mixture it's going to add the meatman amount of water that we're gonna need to make the brine the exact solution that we need it and then we'll be able to use this in just a moment that's perfect it's absolutely perfect and you didn't have to wait for it to cool down so let's see I'm gonna come over here next thing I'm gonna do before I do anything is I'm gonna put these spices in this brine and the other thing I'm gonna put in the brine we're just gonna let those hang out for a minute let's deal with our meat like I said you don't have to get order to work on our vegetables in a minute which tours oh no we're loving to wage tours that's right he does I'm just gonna rape this just a little bit I always like to do that when I breathe when I open up the package Oh done any kind of meat chicken beef whatever it is just get whatever may be on there all there okay so all right now my crock-pot is plugged in but it is not turned on it is in the off position what we're going to do for all of this is just nest in here oh my goodness it smells yummy already alright so get your hand in there kind of make it so that meat is resting just at the same level as the liquid all right oh of course my suspense is a bit difficult it got down to 24 degrees here last night so winter is finally deciding it wants to show up yeah for help I'm just gonna sit over here I'm gonna put the lid on it and we're gonna let that marinate for 15 minutes while we're gone letting that marinate I'm going to prep my vegetables or my vegetables as Wolfgang would say vegetable vegetables so um I'll be back when this is right ready to receive the rest of the ingredients and then it's a no-brainer because then you just turn it on what do you do honey you said it and forget it I don't know it's probably trademarked or something well Ron Popeil can suck it yeah that's alright it's time for coffee alright we'll be back okay our 15 minutes is up it is probably actually more like a half an hour I think Sam oh it smells you have no idea how good this smells my mouth is watering it smells so wonderful okay so the first time to get in here is my beef bouillon and I am gonna use all of it it's two tablespoons and I used a noir K and Oh our our beef bouillon that I get in a Latin food section and yes it has MSG in it a lot of things do but we're not bothered by that so you know all things in moderation and if you choose not to use that's fine you can use beef stock it doesn't matter you lose four cups of beef stock which is two boxes okay and then let's put on our onion our carrot and celery you know what's gonna happen is over the course of day this meat is going to break down and it's gonna become very soft and delicious there's one more thing I'm gonna add to this that I didn't think about earlier I don't ever remember my grandmother adding any garlic but the way I see it I don't understand how it could possibly be a bad thing so I'm just gonna add about two cloves worth just toss it and then I know that the pickling spice has some type of horns in it but I like this this is about a teaspoon of it's called butcher's cut cracked pepper you don't want to put a whole lot of pepper in there because it's gonna cook all day and then you know when what pepper cooks it gets stronger so and that's just about right it's four cups of water let's give this a little rush put the lid on it put your English leave I'm gonna put it on high and I'm just gonna let it cook don't take the lid off remember part of me I've said this before when you take the lid off of a hot crock-pot it takes an hour for it to regain all of that heat so try you know try just looking through the lid if you want to check on it it's really it's okay we don't need to stick up spooning in every hour just really it really impedes the cooking and it takes longer for your your dish to complete so just walk away go do something else enjoy your day enjoy your family cook your breakfast and then later on when it's time to thicken the gravy and have supper then I'm gonna come back and show you how we do that with a really cool ingredient that you're never gonna guess what it is I promise you so we'll be back when it's time our sauerbraten is we've come to the end of our day you know this has been stewing all day and I have to tell you if this tastes amazing you've got to try it okay the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna get a whisk and we're gonna thicken this with a little one drop and I forgot to get the one dress so I'll be right back you've shown in the dumpling mmm there wasn't oh I'll have to show you how to make those another time live this is like a major undertaking but if you know how to do it just right it shouldn't be a problem now I'm gonna probably get in Rick's way so I'm gonna start with a little wonder now you see quarter to a half a cup I always say that because you know you may have a little more liquid in yours than I do or would be any number of reasons and my meat is just it's just falling apart this is gonna be like a soup okay and I'm gonna move this because I can't and what I'm putting in now is the top secret super duper amazing ingredient here we have 10 to 15 ground-up ginger snaps and that's just gonna go in there and thicken up that gravy that meat is just falling apart absolutely delicious we tasted it earlier and I have to tell you when you try this you're kind of just is this gonna blow you away it's so yummy and it smells just like my nanny's kitchen I have to say she's with me today so let's get a ladle and let's dip you out a serving of this amazing sauerbraten soup stew stew whatever you want to call it there's a nice hearty portion and then you get some no food these are potato dumplings and I just haven't sitting here anything in the pan with some melted butter and I hope that you enjoy that and what I'm gonna do sprinkle a little parsley on there and even though that took all day long to cook you really didn't have to touch it a lot at all you really just put it in there you forgot about it you went about your day you come back at the end of the day you add a little flour and those ground ginger snaps which is the top secret ingredient and it's gonna give it just an underlying level of flavor that is gonna knock your socks off so I hope that you'll try this super simple sauerbraten stew and I hope that you love it I hope that you will rate comment and subscribe if you love what you see and until next time