Some like it sour, sourmeat

Sourmeat in aspic

In the following please find a recipe for a refreshing dish, especially delicious in the summer / during hot seasons, sour meat. This dish came actually back to my mind when I was staying in Dongguan where I used to visit a German snack bar that belonged to a friend of mine (cheers Andre). He used to serve beers, sausage and other German specialties. In the northern part of Germany, where my friend comes from, this dish is called Saurfleisch (sourmeat), in the southern regions of Germany where I come from; we call it Tellersuelze (aspic in a plate). According to the tales of my mom, this dish was masterfully prepared by my grandmother, apparently she was so good at it that all the friends of my grandpa used to come around when she made it. This is also the reason why, when I had this dish, alongside with a cold beer, the taste came back to my memory and I decided that I had to try and make this dish again. It is not that difficult to make, basically it is nothing else then a very tasty delicious cold meat dish. So here is the recipe for you.

For the meat dish:
•    For the meat and the broth
•    1 liter of salt water
•    500 g pork (shoulder of stomach)
•    1 onion
•    1 bundle of greens
•    1 bay leave
•    125 ml vinegar
•    1 package of gelatin
•    3 – 4 whole black pepper corns

For the garnish
•    Sliced hard boiled egg
•    Sliced carrots
•    Onion rings
•    Pickled gherkin slices

Cook the salt water, wash the pork and add it to the water, get the foam from top of the water. Add the onion that you cut in quarters, add the bay leaves, the pepper corns and the greens and cook everything for 90 minutes. After this take out the meat from the broth, run the broth through a sieve and catch the liquid in a bowl. Take 375 ml of the liquid, add the vinegar, season to taste with sugar and salt. After this add the gelatin powder, bring the liquid to a boil and switch off the fire as soon as the mixture boils lightly.
Now you can let the mixture cool down and you can start to make the final dish in individual bowls, plates or in a cake forms (this is what I did so I will describe it based on what I did). I first pulled apart the meat and put it in a cake tray (leave everything light and fluffy, don’t press the meat to hard or try to compress it). Now, on top of that meat, I added the slightly cooked onion rings, the sliced gherkins and some sliced carrots (you can try other veggies if you like to, the more colorful and suit to your taste, the better for your taste). Put everything in the tray and store the tray in a fridge. Let everything cool down until it all turns hard, then slide a knife between the side of the cake tray and the sour meat so that the meat will be separated from the side cake tray. Now you put the tray upside down and carefully shake the whole meat “cake” on a board on which you can now slice some portions off.
The best way to enjoy this dish is alongside with some German style fried potatoes and some homemade mayonnaise (guess I will post these recipes soon). Here some pictures of my last “small” portion of sour meat… Enjoy.