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Braised Beef Roast

4 servings

Ingredients

• 2.5 kg Beef (middle tail piece, top round, clod, or short-cut top round)
• Bacon strips (a little)
• Salt (a little)
• Pepper (a little)
• Butter or rendered kidney fat (a little)
• Flour (a little)
• Water, boiling (as needed)
• Bread crust (optional)
• Potato starch (a little)

Instructions

1. For a good braised roast, you need a larger piece of meat, at least 2 to 3 kg.
2. Always prepare it in a shallow pot with a tightly fitting lid.
3. The best cuts are middle tail piece, top round, or clod, or short-cut top round.
4. Wash the meat, pound it until tender, and lard it with bacon strips that have been previously rolled in salt and a little pepper, by making slanted incisions with a sharp knife and inserting the bacon into the resulting holes.
5. To maintain its shape, wrap the meat with twine.
6. In a braising pot, add butter or rendered kidney fat, place the meat (optionally dusted with a little flour) in it as soon as the fat sizzles, and brown it on all sides.
7. Sprinkle a little salt over it and pour a small amount of boiling water in from the side.
8. Scrape loose the browned bits from the bottom and sides of the pot from time to time with a spoon, and then repeatedly add a little more boiling water, allowing it to continue braising.
9. This will result in brown meat and brown sauce.
10. Once both are brown, cover the pot as tightly as possible and let everything continue to simmer slowly, basting the meat with the sauce from time to time, moving it back and forth, and occasionally turning it without piercing.
11. To thicken the sauce, you can also add a bread crust, but then you must strain the sauce through a sieve before serving; otherwise, degrease it half an hour beforehand and thicken it with potato starch.

Modernized from a treasured 19th-century German cookbook.