One of my favorite dinners ever is rouladen and spaetzle, Mom learned how to make it when she was 17 living in Tubingen, Germany as an au pair. This meal has become one of our family's all time favorites, it was Grandpa Larson's request every year for his Birthday. While fairly simple this recipe does take a little bit of time and needs to be made before noon of the day it is to be served. This way it can cook slowly for the rest of the afternoon getting nice and soft that no knife is required if done right.
To start you need to clear up some counter space in your kitchen and clean it really well because the first step requires all of the raw pieces of round cut beef to be laid out flat directly on your counter. These will be the base for the next ingredients to be placed upon; when done the whole thing will be rolled up tight like a mini burrito. Start by laying a half a piece of raw bacon lengthwise on each piece of beef, make sure that the bacon does not go past the edges of the beef as it shouldn't stick out of the ends once the whole thing is rolled up.
Next, sprinkle the meat with salt pepper and dried mustard; we usually use Coleman’s dried mustard. Now cover each with a generous layer of diced onions, don't worry about these staying in the edges of the meat just spread them everywhere, it will make a mess but that's half the fun. Finally, the key ingredient, is a dill pickle, place it across the width of the beef at one end, as it will be the center of the roll. My cousin hates pickles so we put a carrot in a few for her when she visited, which I think is totally sacrilegious as the pickle adds a subtle but divine hint of tanginess that just shouldn't be left out. So please at least give it a try before you replace it with something else. Also, a pickle is the traditional center of a rouladen that every German restaurant and recipe uses so it only makes sense to give it a try.
Next, you roll up each rouladen one by one wrapping it with thread or we have flexible metal clamps to keep them rolled up during the cooking process. We used to always use thread and sometimes still do because the clamps can be a pain to clean. I suggest you use a bright colored thread that will stand out from the brown color of the cooked beef (it makes it easier to find and unwrap. Tip: Put the spindle of thread in a kitchen drawer and pull the loose end of the thread out of the drawer so you can easily pull long lengths of it without it getting all tangled up. This was my first job as a little girl. I would pull the long strips of thread out and cut them into lengths about the distance of my forearm and hand them to mom one at a time. She would then wrap the thread around the whole rouladen, starting at one end and finishing at the opposite.
Each rouladen then goes directly into a hot frying pan with some vegetable oil to be browned. Make sure you healthily brown the rouladen on all sides (this is important if you do it until the meat is just grey your gravy will be grey, not golden brown). Then add the cold gravy mixture (below) it needs to be cold so it doesn't boil too fast and get lumpy to the pan with the browned rouladen. You will have onion bits that fell out of the rouladen when you rolled them up, scrape them off the counter and add them to the gravy and season with salt and pepper. The rouladen will simmer in this gravy for the next few hours. You can put them in a crockpot for 6 hours, or oven at 325 for 2 hours. You can also do it on the stovetop but you have to watch it closely to make sure it doesn't burn on the bottom. As it cooks this sauce will thicken and mix with the water and other juices to create an awesome gravy that we laughingly and lovingly call “Rouladen Soup!
Spaetzle - Half an hour before you want to eat is when you make the next part of the recipe, which is homemade German noodles called spaetzle. First set up a big pot of water to boil, making sure you add some salt to the water. Then make up the dough for the spaetzle. We make the noodles with a spaetzle machine. If you don't have a ricer or spaetzle machine you can make them by hand. (Stay tuned for a blog on how).
The water must be at a rolling boil before you press the noodles into it. Do not stir the noodles or the will break apart. You will know they are cooked and ready to scoop out (use a large mesh or slotted spoon) when they rise to the top of the pot. However, we usually push them down once or twice before we take them out just to make sure they are done. Then repeat the process one press at a time until all the dough is used up. As you add the noodles to the pot the water will start to boil over and continue to do so the whole time, the water needs to keep boiling so don't turn it down. When I was a little girl my mom used to put me on overflow duty; I would stand on a stool beside her armed with a glass of cold water so that the minute the water got too close to spilling over and making a mess of the stove I would add a little splash of cold water which always cooled it just enough to make the tempest subside.
Cooking with my mom as a little girl was made special by little things like cutting the thread, and manning the overflow, which all started my interest in cooking. I remember how important I felt, how excited I was to be 'cooking' with mom. She would always tell everyone when we sat down to eat that it was Cori who made the spaetzle or the rouladen and of course I loved all the compliments I got for my ‘hard’ efforts from my grandparents.
Eventually, I started helping her more and more like sprinkling the spices on the rouladen or adding the pickle before she rolled them. Then once I was older mom would always call me to help her in the kitchen by saying, "Cori! You better get in here and learn how to make this so if I kick the bucket you can carry on the tradition." I would always laugh and say "yeah right!" but it always brought us together, no matter what was going on in my life I always had time to cook with my mom it was 'our' time. Now that I have my own daughter I can't wait for her to grow up learning to cook with me and her Oma.
Ingredients
1 minced onion
1/2 pound bacon or more
Salt
Pepper
Dry mustard
Dill pickles enough for each rouladen
Thin beef round steaks (2 per person) most butchers know what you want if you tell them you need meat to make Rouladen.
Gravy
3-4 cups of flour
3-4 cups cold water
Mix till there are no lumps, I use an emersion blender.
Spaetzle
6 eggs
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
¼ cup of water
Comments