Alsace & the North · Main

Baeckeoffe

Intermediate
40 min
roughly 3 of 4 for cost

aromatic · warm-spiced Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, warm spice humming through the middle.

Ingredients

400 g pork shoulder, in 4 cm cubes
400 g lamb shoulder, in 4 cm cubes
400 g beef chuck, in 4 cm cubes
750 ml dry Sylvaner or Riesling
2 onions, sliced
1 leek, sliced
2 carrots, in rounds
3 garlic cloves, crushed
8 juniper berries
3 bay leaves
4 sprigs thyme
1.2 kg waxy potatoes, in 5 mm slices
14 g salt
Black pepper
150 g plain flour, for the seal
90 ml water, for the seal

The skills inside

Steaming: basket, leaf and lid Straining & passing through a sieve Marinating: acid, salt and time

The words inside

Riesling

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Marinate the three meats overnight in the cold with the wine, onion, leek, garlic, juniper, bay and thyme; by morning the meat looks grey and the wine has gone cloudy.
Layer the clay terrine potato, meat, potato, salting each layer, and pour in the strained marinade until it just glints between the top slices.
Knead the flour and water to a stiff rope, press it round the rim and set the lid into it, working the paste up over the join until no gap will whistle.
Bake at 160C (320F) for three hours without once lifting the lid. The seal is done when it has gone hard and pale gold.
Crack the seal at the table with a knife point. The escaping steam should smell of wine and juniper, and the top potatoes should still be whole and glossy, not dried at the edges.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes

Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.

Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.

Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes

Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.

Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.

At the Table

The Pour: Cabernet or Rioja Reserva
Also Right: Malbec
From the Taps: Porter
Zero-Proof: Pomegranate spritz

Lamb’s sweet grass-fat wants structure: tannin from Cabernet, smoke-echo from Rioja’s oak, or Syrah’s pepper for the spiced routes.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Baeckeoffe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Alsace & the North kitchen