My family loves German food. We always get super excited when traveling if we find a German restaurant. I want to expand my knowledge of German cooking, but is hard not to make our favorites. My kids most frequently ask for sauerbraten, but these beef rouladen are a close 2nd.
I am not going to lie, these do take a bit of work. They aren’t complicated, but you first need to tenderize the individual pieces of beef. Then you fill them with the fillings, and tie them with kitchen twine so they stay in rolls while cooking. It is SO worth the time though. This is usually a weekend meal for us since I have more time to spend on it then.
I always serve these with spatzle and German red cabbage (recipes here for those). The combination of the savory meat and gravy, soft buttery spatzle, and sweet and sour cabbage is divine. A few things you need to make this recipe are a meat tenderizer like the below and a roll of kitchen twine. Kitchen scissors are good too for removing the twine before eating.
To make these delicious beef rouladen, after you pound the meat thin, fill, and tie them, pan fry them until nicely browned. Place them in an oven safe baking dish. Make a roux using the drippings from the pan and flour, then whisk in beef broth and wine and seasonings to create an amazing gravy. Pour over the meat and bake until they are tender, about 90 minutes.
This is such a delectable dinner, I hope you will give it a try.
Beef Rouladen
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lbs beef round steak or flank steak thin cut if you can find it
- dijon mustard
- salt and pepper
- 1 package bacon
- 1 large onion chopped
- dill pickle spears
- 1/4 cup AP flour
- 1 1/2 cups beef broth
- 1/2 cup dry red wine
- oil for cooking beef
Instructions
- If you can't find thin cut round steak or flank steak, cut your steak into pieces about 3-4 inches wide, and halve them horizontally if the steak is thick. Whether you bought already thin cut steak, or regular, pound out the pieces with the meat tenderizer until about 1/8 inch thick. Season with pepper and a tiny bit of salt but not too much because the bacon and pickle have a lot of salt.
- Chop the bacon into small pieces and in a frying pan cook the bacon, stirring often until it is cooked and mostly crispy. Drain onto paper towels.
- Spread each piece of meat with some mustard and spread some bacon and chopped onion over it. Place the pickle spear in the center. Roll the meat around the pickle and secure with a length of twine at each end.
- Put a few tbsp of oil in a frying pan and brown the roulades on all sides. Remove to a plate. Add the flour and whisk it, cooking for a few minutes. Slowly whisk in the wine and broth and allow to come to a boil.
- Pour the sauce over the rolls, cover with foil and place into a 325 degree oven for about 90 minutes. Check the rolls by poking with a knife to see if they are tender. Remove from the oven and let sit for 10 minutes.
- Remove the twine using kitchen scissors and serve with spatzle and red cabbage.
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