Badisches Ochsenfleisch mit Meerrettichsoße

Badisches Ochsenfleisch mit Meerrettichsoße is Upper Rhine feast food: Baden wedding, Kirchweih, and Sunday table, especially from autumn into winter when the root cellar is doing its work. Ox brisket gives gelatin, fat, and a clear broth if you treat it quietly. I put sweet-sour Zwetschgen beside it because the larder belongs on the plate, not in a story.

Every region takes a different road to boiled beef. Baden softens fresh Meerrettich, horseradish, in a pale stock sauce and brings fruit to the table; Franconia and Bavaria call the root Kren and serve it sharper, often with apple; Vienna turns Tafelspitz into its own full service with spinach and chive sauce. Im Norden anders, im Süden anders. This is Baden, so the broth in the pot becomes the sauce. Weggeworfen wird nichts.

The whole dish lives on the simmer. The pot must only tremble, never roll, because a hard boil tightens brisket before the collagen has melted and it clouds the stock you need for the sauce. Skim at the beginning, then leave it alone. Das braucht seine Zeit.

At the end I grate the horseradish fresh and stir most of it into the sauce off a hard boil. Heat drives off the sharp mustard oils, and prepared horseradish from the glass arrives tired and vinegary before you start. Nicht aus dem Glas. Slice the meat across the grain, moisten it with its own broth, and put the plums next to the pale sauce.