I’ve written a couple times about my grandpa and grandma going out for a restaurant meal, and I’ve always wondered what they ordered.
In their day and age, a night out to celebrate usually meant a steak of some sort, and I’m sure my grandpa enjoyed more than a few of those.
There is one dish, though, that I know my grandfather enjoyed at home and at restaurants, when he could get it.
I know this because — you guessed it — he expressed his fondness for it on his calendar.
Exhibit A, from January 29, 1966, involves a meal out:

January 29, 1966. Hugo’s used to be a German restaurant (don’t see many of those any more) somewhere in Fairfield County. I ate there once myself, in the spring of 1981, as part of a huge family gathering to celebrate my grandparents’ 40th wedding anniversary. It’s possible I had the sauerbraten, but I don’t remember.
And Exhibit B, from almost exactly the same time the year before, features a meal at home.

January 26 and 27, 1965. Some people look forward to Shark Week, others to Fashion Week, and still others to Sauerbraten Week.
Despite being fairly handy and experimentative in the kitchen, I’d never made sauerbraten. The thought had never even crossed my mind.
But when I saw these two calendar entries, I knew I would have to give it a try. My grandpa would expect nothing less.
To the kitchen, then.
# # # # #
Sauerbraten, for anyone not familiar with the concept, is an old German recipe in which a beef roast is marinated for several days in a mix of vinegar and spices before being cooked pot-roast fashion. The marinade cooks with the meat, and is then thickened to serve as gravy.
It’s solid, stick-to-your-ribs fare, perfect for wintry nights … but not bland or lacking in nuance, like some such dishes can be.
Unfortunately, I do not have my great-grandma’s sauerbraten recipe. So I took my battered copy of The Joy of Cooking in hand and went to work.

The beef prepares to enter the fridge, ensconced in a soak of vinegar, sugar, peppercorns, bay leaves, onion powder and maybe a trace of nutmeg.
Joy says sauerbraten should soak anywhere from two to four days (Wikipedia suggests as long as 10, but that sounded long to me.)
I gave my beef about three-and-a-half days, turning occasionally, which seemed like a good amount of time. And when it came out on Saturday afternoon, it looked like this:
The next step was to brown the meat on all sides while warming up the marinade in a separate pan:
Then, everything went into the oven for about three-and-a-half hours at 320 degrees. (In the interim I did some laundry; shoveled off my deck; napped on the couch; and started making spaetzle, Teutonic mini-dumplings that go nicely with just about anything German.)
At the appointed time, I took the meat out of the oven and admired my handiwork and … well, I’m pretty sure I screwed it up.
See, all the pix of sauerbraten I’ve ever seen show it as conventional slices of beef, like a pot roast looks.
But the beef I had had the breaking-down texture of barbecued beef or pork — more suitable for pulling into long strings.
So that’s what I did with it. Who am I to blow against the wind?
After doing that, I strained the remaining marinade and combined it with a bit of light cream and some crushed gingersnaps — an old cook’s trick to add both body and spice to the sauce.
For the final touches, I served some applesauce as a side dish, and poured the sort of light American pilsner that would have been common in my grandfather’s time.
How was it?
Well, I’m still not sure I made it right — I don’t think real sauerbraten is supposed to break down into strings. (Joy suggested several different cuts of beef, but the one I chose may not have been the same cut most commonly used by German cooks.)
But it tasted pretty good — considerably better than it looked. It was pleasantly puckery without being overbearing, and the gravy added a nice sweetness to the meat and the spaetzle.
In between the vinegary tang and the moist, sweet sauce, it came out almost like a German twist on barbecue.
My older son and wife ate heartily, and even my younger son — who usually assumes a high-handed Statler-and-Waldorf contempt toward my cooking — ate a good amount and suggested I make it again.
I think my grandpa would have enjoyed it as well … though at first glance, he probably would have asked me what I did with the sauerbraten he’d been waiting three days for.
Good for you, making this dish your grandfather loved. The meat must have been so tender and tasty.
I didn’t get it right, but it was a good sort of not-right.
In today’s fusion-food culture, I could probably play it off as “German with a Southern twist” … serve it with cornbread and pretend I meant to bring two cultures together. 😉
You’re right; it’s not supposed to look like that. But never having made it, I have no idea what you would have to do to make it sliceable. We will look for your great-grandmother’s recipe and send it if we find it. The family joke was that your great-grandmother would marinate it for a week in the garbage can down cellar.
Hugo’s at that time was on Camp Avenue, just around the corner and no more than a mile from their house on Hope Street. It is where they would celebrate their 25th anniversary in May, 1966, which you have covered in this blog elsewhere.
Re: Lack of German Restaurants – Very recently I read an article (I think in The Economist) about how Americans of German ancestry outnumber Americans derived from any other country, and yet you don’t notice them because they have more totally assimilated into the American gumbo than all the others. You are a third or fourth generation German American – but save the delicious meal above – probably don’t think of yourself that way and don’t consciously look for German-Americans to hang out with. I think third generation Italians and Macedonians identify more with their heritage. At least it’s worth a good discussion over a good German beer!
There is still a Hugo’s restaurant in Stamford today — but it is, of all things, Mexican. (I think it is on Stillwater Avenue, if I remember what Google told me.)
Here in the Lehigh Valley, I don’t have to look for German-Americans to hang out with; you can barely swing a stein without hitting one.
But you are correct that I’ve never sought out people of my ethnic stock to hang out with.
(Of course, there is much more than German in my/our background, too.)
Since I moved to the LV, I have read about several ethnic clubs closing — f’rinstance, I drive pretty regularly past something that was a Ukrainian social club. So I think the idea that you spend your time among your own people has maybe faded.
My apologies – I thought I had given you The Recipe, but I just found it. It will be scanned/copied. I’ll give you the original when I see you.
FIW – vinegar is known as a tenderizer, breaking down that part of beef that holds the shape of the cut (I don’t know the technical term) so meat marinated for 3 plus days has had time to tenderize and won’t hold it’s shape to be neatly sliced.
Lynn
Thank you. I still suspect I picked the wrong cut, though I don’t remember what I used.
I think you did a great job and it looks delicious! Even if you bought the right cut of meat it may have lost its shape. My mom and grandmother both agreed that as meat was improved(?) to make it leaner and healthier(?) the texture of many cuts changed. Some cuts aren’t even available anymore. A couple dishes my grandmother would make in the 40’s or 50’s would have to cook for hours or it would be tough, by the late 70’s if you cooked it that long it would fall apart because it was leaner and different.
You could always call it Shredded Sauerbraten. Put Shredded in front of it and even my kids would try it. Shredded is “in”
Thanks
Yes! Shredded sauerbraten.
Or even better: Deconstructed sauerbraten.
Tonight’s special: Artisanal deconstructed sauerbraten.
(OK, I’m going off the rails.)
You have a point about cuts of meat changing, too.
[…] « Jan. 26-27, 1965: The sour and the sweet. […]
I remember some sauerbraten ALMOST shredding. If it didn’t, it would be too tough, which would be worse.The cut of the meat was originally stoic like Germans; hence the need for the multi-day marination. It was brave of you to take on this dish!
[…] For the somewhat more of you who dug the blog post on sauerbraten, my parents very kindly unearthed my great-grandma’s sauerbraten recipe, along with a side […]