German · Main
Rehrücken Baden-Baden
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, leaving a faint perfume.
Ingredients
- 700 g venison loin, in 2 even pieces, silverskin removed
- 6 g fine salt
- 2 g ground black pepper
- 30 g clarified butter
- 40 g cold butter, in cubes
- 2 firm pears, about 320 g, halved and cored
- 250 ml dry white wine
- 60 g caster sugar
- 1 strip pared lemon zest
- 120 g lingonberry preserve
- 150 ml dry red wine
- 300 ml game or brown veal stock
- 6 juniper berries, crushed
- 1 sprig rosemary
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Reducing a sauceSearing: the hard crustRoasting in a hot ovenThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilStraining & passing through a sieveResting meat & slicing against the grain
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · 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
- Slide a thin knife under the silverskin and strip it off in sheets, since it never renders and it bows the loin as it shrinks.
- Poach the pear halves in the white wine with the sugar and lemon zest until a knife enters with slight resistance, about 12 minutes, then leave them to cool in their syrup. 12 min
- Salt and pepper the loin, sear it hard in the clarified butter on every face, then roast at 160C (325F) until the centre reads 52C (126F), about 14 minutes. 14 min
- Rest the loin on a warm plate for 10 minutes while it climbs to 54C (129F), and meanwhile reduce the red wine with the juniper and rosemary to a glaze, add the stock and reduce by half. 10 min
- Strain the sauce and swirl in the cold butter off the heat, fill the pear halves with the lingonberry, and carve the loin across the grain in 1.5 cm 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.
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.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
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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