Austrian · Main
Gespickte Rehkeule
- Advanced
- 50 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, an earthy, grounding base, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 1.8 kg venison haunch, boned, sinew stripped and tied
- 120 g pork back fat, frozen 20 minutes, cut into 5 mm strips
- 16 g fine salt
- 8 juniper berries, crushed
- 4 allspice berries, crushed
- 3 g coarsely ground black pepper
- 40 g clarified butter
- 150 g carrot, in 2 cm dice
- 120 g celeriac, in 2 cm dice
- 150 g onion, in 2 cm dice
- 250 ml dry red wine
- 400 ml game or brown veal stock
- 100 g sour cream, at room temperature
- 60 g lingonberry preserve
- 2 bay leaves
- 3 sprigs thyme
The skills inside
Deglazing & pan saucesSearing: the hard crustRoasting in a hot ovenStraining & passing through a sieveKnife cuts: dice, julienne, biasResting meat & slicing against the grain
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · celery · 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
- Rub the haunch with the salt, juniper, allspice and pepper and leave it uncovered on a rack in the fridge overnight, until the surface is tacky rather than wet.
- Thread the frozen fat strips through the muscle with a larding needle every 3 cm, following the grain, leaving 1 cm of fat standing proud at each end.
- Sear every face in the clarified butter until the crust is the colour of dark toast, add the carrot, celeriac, onion, bay and thyme, and roast at 140C (275F) until the centre reads 58C (136F), about 85 minutes. 85 min
- Rest the meat under loose foil for 20 minutes while it climbs to 63C (145F), which is where a larded joint has to finish, and meanwhile deglaze the pan with the wine, reduce it to a glaze and add the stock. 20 min
- Strain the sauce, whisk in the sour cream and lingonberry off the heat, and carve the haunch across the grain in 5 mm slices.
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.
Deglazing & pan sauces 49 recipes
- The pan still holds its fond. Nothing has been rinsed, wiped, or soaked, and the browned layer is intact on the floor.
- Excess fat was poured off first and the browned layer left behind; the fat is not the flavour and a sauce carrying all of it will not come together.
- The liquid went into a still-hot pan and the floor came clean: scraped while it bubbles, the base goes from stuck brown to bare metal and the sauce darkens as it takes it up.
- The fond was brown and not black. A burnt floor dissolves into bitterness that cannot be seasoned out, and is better washed away than deglazed.
- Reduced first and seasoned afterwards, tasted at the consistency it will be served at rather than at the start.
Where it goes wrong The pan was left to stand and go cold before anybody came back to it. Cold fond will not dissolve, so the scraping lifts nothing, and the sauce arrives thin and pale with the flavour it was supposed to carry still welded to the metal.
Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes
- The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
- Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
- Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
- It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
- The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.
Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Syrah (northern Rhône) or Nebbiolo
- Also Right
- The braising wine itself, better bottle
- From the Taps
- Belgian dubbel
- Zero-Proof
- Beet & blackcurrant shrub
Long-cooked beef trades bite for depth: savory, structured reds echo the pot; and pouring the braise’s own region is law.
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