Zrazy: Polish beef roulades with bacon and pickle, braised in mushroom gravy
A traditional Polish Sunday dinner: thin slices of beef pounded, spread with mustard, rolled around bacon, a brined pickle and onion, browned and braised for an hour and a half in stock with dried mushrooms. The gravy is dark, thick, slightly sour from the pickle. With buckwheat and beetroot. Zrazy take time, not skill.
Your own work in that: 1 h.
- Soaking mushrooms, pounding and rolling 30 min
- Browning 20 min
- Braising 90 min
- Gravy 10 min
Step by step
0 / 8 done
Soak the mushrooms
Cover the mushrooms with a cup of warm water and leave 30 minutes. Keep the water; it goes into the gravy. Prepare the meat meanwhile.
Ingredients: 15 g dried forest mushrooms · 700 ml beef or vegetable stock · 2 pcs bay leaves · 4 pcs allspice berries · 1 tsp dried marjoram
Mushrooms in warm water, the water for the gravy
Pound the slices
Put each slice of beef between film and pound with a mallet to 5 mm thick, into a rectangle of about 12 × 18 cm. Salt and pepper. A thin slice rolls without splitting and softens evenly in braising.
Ingredients: 800 g beef topside slices · 3 tbsp medium-hot mustard · 150 g smoked bacon · 3 pcs brined pickled cucumbers · 2 pcs onions · 1 tsp salt · 1 tsp black pepper · 3 tbsp plain flour · 3 tbsp lard or oil
TipBuy topside cut across the grain; ask the butcher to slice it thin. Meat cut along the grain unrolls and tears.
Five millimetres, across the grain
Add the filling
Spread each slice thinly with mustard. At the narrower end lay a rasher of bacon, a lengthways quarter of pickle and a few slivers of onion. Don't overfill: a fat roulade won't roll and will burst.
Mustard, bacon, pickle, onion
Roll and tie
Fold the sides in and roll the slice tightly from the filling end. Tie with cotton string or secure with toothpicks. Dust the roulades in 2 spoons of flour.
Tight, tied, floured
Brown
Heat the lard in a heavy pot and brown the roulades in batches over high heat, about 2 minutes a side (about 8 minutes per batch), until dark brown. Lift out. Soften the rest of the onion, sliced, in the same fat.
TipThe brown crust is the flavour of the gravy. Roulades put in the pot without browning give a pale, flat sauce.
High heat, brown on every side
Braise an hour and a half
Return the roulades to the pot, add the mushrooms with their soaking water, the bay leaves and allspice, and pour in hot stock to nearly cover the meat. Bring to the boil, turn the heat to minimum and braise covered 90 minutes, until a fork slides in without resistance. When the braising starts, put the beetroot on to boil in their skins (about 60 minutes, until tender). In the last 20 minutes cook the buckwheat in salted water (twice its volume), and peel, grate and warm the beetroot with a pinch of salt.
Ingredients: 300 g buckwheat groats · 500 g beetroot
TipBeef turns tender only when its collagen becomes gelatine, and that needs time over low heat. At 60 minutes a roulade can still be tough; by 90 it is usually tender.
Low heat, 90 minutes, covered
Thicken the gravy
Lift out the roulades and remove the string. Mix a spoon of flour into half a cup of cold water, pour into the gravy while stirring, and simmer 3 minutes. Add the marjoram, season with salt and pepper. Return the roulades to the gravy briefly to warm through.
Flour slurry, three minutes, marjoram
Serve
Two roulades per person, plenty of gravy, buckwheat and beetroot. Reheated the next day they are even better: the gravy soaks into the meat.
Roulades, gravy, buckwheat, beetroot
Before you start
Pork roulades
The same recipe with thin slices of pork loin or leg; braise 45 minutes instead of 90.
With pepper and sausage
A strip of red pepper and a piece of smoked sausage in the filling instead of the pickle, a teaspoon of sweet paprika in the gravy. A Hungarian-style version.
The meat is tough
Braised too briefly, or over too high a heat. Keep going: beef over low heat always gives in eventually.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
