Bavarian Pot Roast: Germany recipe

I had to laugh as I searched up German recipes because every single recipe started out like this, “My German grandma used to make this.” If they are to be believed, there are an astonishingly large number of German grandmothers running around among food bloggers. At least the one I picked did specify their German grandma was from Bavaria, so hopefully our Bavarian pot roast is somewhat authentic. Either way it as delicious, and I’ll be adding it to my cooking around the world as part of our geography lessons, and our general recipe rotation.

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Unrelated to the Bavarian pot roast

Central Texas was founded by Germans. There are German food restaurants all around, a hop, skip, and a jump away from us, Fredricksburg has an Oktoberfest every year, and half a dozen excellent German food recipes.

So, I was looking forward to studying Germany in-depth with the kids, but since a good number of the countries we’ve studied recently had schnitzel as their meals, I didn’t want to eat schnitzel for Germany. Though I have saved a soft pretzel recipe because I love soft pretzels.

 

Our Bavarian Pot Roast recipe

After looking around a bit, as I said, I found this Bavarian Pot Roast recipe.

I’ve made a few modifications to how I cooked it to suit how we cook.

Bavarian pot roast ingredients

• pot roast
• 1 tablespoon oil (I used olive, they said canola)
• 1 1/4 cup broth (this is the first change I made)
• 1/4 cup beer
• 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar, though balsamic vinegar, totally chose that one because the bottle is cool, would also taste good)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I’ve found for my family 1 teaspoon is the limit of what they’ll accept of cinnamon in a main dish, that other recipe did not go well)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger

Yield: 5-6 servings

Bavarian Pot Roast

Print

Bavarian pot roast is a great recipe to fix and leave cooking on your stove or in the slow cooker to eat later.

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 8 hours 6 seconds

Total Time 8 hours 15 minutes 6 seconds

Ingredients

• 3-4 pounds pot roast
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 1/4 cup beef broth
• 1/4 cup beer
• 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Instructions

1. Brown the roast in a pan using the hot oil. Then put in your slow cooker.
2. In your slow cooker, combine the broth, beer, tomato sauce, onion, sugar, vinegar, salt, cinnamon, bay leaf, pepper, and ginger.
3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 3-4 hours.

How it actually went

I usually transform recipes like this into slow cooker recipes, which is what I’m going to do next time. I wanted to learn how to use a dutch oven for cooking, so I gave it a try.

It didn’t work out quite so well.

I’m still learning just how to cook with a dutch oven, since then I’m a bit better, but I didn’t watch it closely enough and most of the liquids cooked off, so while the meat was completely cooked, it wasn’t tender and juicy because the liquid had all cooked off.

So, lesson learned, when cooking in the dutch oven you need to watch it more closely. Also, I probably could have started it a little bit earlier and let it cook longer on low, and it would have tasted even better.

I want to give the caveat, this was delicious the first time we made it (and as I finish writing this post six months later, yes I have lots of posts sitting in drafts for months and sometimes even years on end), but a bit dry.

I’ve since made it again, it’s actually quite popular now for making pot roast, and now I make it in the slow cooker (you’ll notice that is how I gave the directions in the recipe card).

Making it in the slow cooker meant I had liquid left afterward to be able to make a gravy, that really worked well with the pot roast.

I also wanted to try: German soft pretzels, because I LOVE soft pretzels with queso. Maybe I’ll give that a try still because soft pretzels are delicious.

More geography fun or yummy recipes

• Cyprus Almond Shortbread
• Singapore Unit
• Australia booklist
• Chagall art history lesson
• Lithuania kibinai