Zoervleisj

“Zoervleisj”, literally means sour meat. A dish from Limburg located in the South of the Netherlands. Very delicious when served with fries and salad.
Originally it’s made with horse meat and you need to wait for 3 hours until it’s finished. But don’t worry, I’ve made it a lot easier and quicker for you.
For this recipe I’m using beef and a pressure cooker to reduce the cooking time with 1 hour.

Ingredients

Preparation

• 1) Cut the beef steaks in cubes of 1 cm by 1 cm and place them in a bowl. Now add: 2 dl of vinegar, 4 bay leaves, 4 cloves and around 2 teaspoons of salt. Tip is to poke the cloves into the bay leaves, so you can remove them easier later. Mix the ingredients together. Then cover the bowl with plastic foil and keep it in the fridge between 8 and 24 hours. The longer you marinate, the more tender the meat will become.
• 2) Pour the marinade trough a sieve and collect the liquid in another bowl. We will use this later. Separate the meat from all the other ingredients. Don’t throw anything away. We need these later for the cooking process.
• 3) Pat the meat dry with a kitchen towel or paper, to prepare it for baking. Marinate the meat in salt. Put a table spoon full of butter in a frying pan. When the butter is hot enough, start frying the meat in small parts, for example three. This way they will actually fry instead of being cooked in their own liquid. Fry them until all sides are brown and place them in a casserole or pressure cooker, depending which one you want to use. Repeat these steps for the rest of the meat.
• 4) Cut the onions in thick slices and saute these in the same pan until they are brown. Then add the marinade, including all it’s ingredients, we set aside earlier. We also want to add 1 teaspoon of both salt and pepper. Then add 1 teaspoon of apple syrup and stir this through the other ingredients.
• 5) Pour the ingredients of the pan into the pressure cooker. Add 2 dl of water and stir the ingredients. Don’t add the gingerbread yet.
  Cook for about 3 hours in a casserole or 1 hour in the pressure cooker on it’s highest setting, on low heat.
• 6) Finally we can add the gingerbread to make the mixture thicker. Cut the gingerbread in smaller cubes and add these to the mixture and keep stirring until all is dissolved. Continue doing this for about 15 to 30 minutes on low heat.
• 7) Check if the mixture is bound and thick. If it’s still watery, then it’s best to add some corn starch or wheat flour to make it thicker.