Baeckeoffe

Three meats marinated overnight and layered raw with potatoes under a pot sealed with a rope of dough, which is not opened.

Pork, Beef, Lamb. Not vegetarian — contains beef, lamb, pork.

Ingredients

For the marinade

• 500 g beef shin, in large pieces
• 500 g pork shoulder, in large pieces
• 500 g lamb shoulder, in large pieces
• 1 bottle dry white wine, Riesling or similar
• 2 onions, sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 bay leaves
• a few thyme and parsley sprigs
• 1 teaspoon juniper berries
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns

For the pot

• 1.5 kg waxy potatoes, sliced 5 mm
• 3 onions, sliced
• 2 leeks, sliced
• 1 pig's trotter, split, optional
• salt and pepper

To seal

• 200 g plain flour
• 120 ml water

Method

1. THE POT IS SEALED WITH A ROPE OF DOUGH AND IT IS NOT OPENED. Flour and water rolled into a sausage, pressed round the rim and the lid set on top of it. Nothing escapes for three hours: no steam, no wine, no smell. Everything that comes out of the meat stays in with it, and because no liquid is lost there is none to be added. Lift the lid to look and you have let out the whole mechanism -- and the dough will not reseal.
2. WHICH MEANS IT CANNOT BE TASTED OR ADJUSTED, so it is seasoned properly as it is layered. Salt between every layer. There is no stage later at which anything can be corrected, and this is the one dish on this site where that is literally true.
3. THE MEAT GOES IN RAW AND IS NOT BROWNED, like the daube here and for the same reason: the overnight marinade has already done that work, and browning would give one roasted flavour across three meats that are supposed to stay distinguishable.
4. AND IT IS LAYERED POTATO, MEAT, POTATO, finishing with potato. The top layer bakes dry and faintly crusted under the lid while the bottom layer breaks down into the liquid and thickens it. Mixed together, neither happens.
5. THE DOUGH SEAL IS NOT EATEN. It comes off hard and floury.
6. The three meats, wine, onions, garlic, herbs, juniper and peppercorns combined and left covered in the fridge OVERNIGHT, at least 12 hours.
7. The meat lifted out, the marinade STRAINED and the liquid kept. The marinade vegetables kept too.
8. A large earthenware pot or casserole layered: a third of the potatoes, then the onions and leeks, SALTED.
9. Half the meat, the marinade vegetables, salt and pepper. The trotter tucked in if using.
10. Another third of the potatoes, the rest of the meat, salt and pepper.
11. The last of the potatoes overlapped neatly on top and salted.
12. The strained marinade poured in to come just below the top layer -- not over it.
13. The flour and water mixed to a stiff paste, rolled into a long rope, pressed round the rim of the pot, and the lid set firmly on it.
14. Into a 160C oven for 3 HOURS, UNOPENED. The seal cracked off at the table and the pot opened in front of everyone, which is the only reasonable reward for not having looked.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes