Zwiebelrostbraten, the Austrian classic of beef piled high with fried onions
My old friend Fred Plotkin, food and opera writer extraordinaire, once told me that Austrian food is his second favorite cuisine in the world (Italian, of course, about which he’s written many books, is his first). I was dumbstruck. When he told me this, about five years ago, I barely knew what Austrian food was; I had never even thought of it as a special category.
But then, on a soon-after trip to Austria, I had my first zwiebelrostbraten (tzvee-bull-ROASHT-bra-den)–a fabulous everyday dish of beef with fried onions–and I was hooked on Austria. Follow me now, as I draw way too much significance out of a dish that your Austrian mama would have made you on a cold day without even mentioning it!
What Senor Fred had in mind was two things:
1) The exotic transformation that comes to German food when it crosses the border into Austria. The history of Austria is much more prevalent in Austrian cuisine than is the history of Germany in German cuisine. Touches from old relationships with neighboring states are always at or near the surface: spiciness from Hungary and its chili obsession; manifold dumplings from the Czech tradition; a lightness or “southernness” derived in parts of Austria from the Italian geographic connection.
2) The food consciousness of the Austrians is among the highest in Europe! When you travel, you can sense easily whether the culture that surrounds you is “into” food, and to what extent they’re into it. On my recent trip to southern Austria’s Steiermark (which we often call “Styria” in English), I felt as if I were in the gastro-spiritual equivalent of France. They care passionately about their food…leading to great cooks, great restaurants, careful cooking, that you can see and taste on every plate. Steiermark may be a peak, but there are plenty of locales around the country like this. Why? Plotkin had an interesting insight about Vienna, when we spoke. “It is the sexiest city on earth,” he said. When I asked him why, he replied, simply, that everyone is thinking about sex…and I don’t think he meant Sigmund Freud alone. If this is true…well, it’s a short leap from that kind of sensuality to gastronomic sensuality. (NOTE: There’s no dearth of any sort of sensual thought in France, either!)
There’s hardly space here to fill you in on all of Austrian cuisine…but, today, I want to tell you about a recent intimacy I had with the seductive and magnificent zwiebelrostbraten.
As with any great love, “age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.” If I’ve had a dozen zwiebelrostbraten in Austria, I’ve had them cooked a dozen different ways…though an obsessive attention to beef, sauce, butter and onions is always in the mix.
I had my zwiebelrostbraten day in the sun about a month ago, while working on recipes for my new David Rosengarten Wagyu-of-the-Month club If you become a member, every month you get a different cut of wagyu (shipped from DeBragga, New York’s greatest butcher)…along with my customized recipe for that cut of meat.
When we finalized top sirloin as the February wagyu cut, I realized that this fabulous but somewhat obscure chunk is very close to what they often use in Austria for zwiebelrostbraten:
My top sirloin wagyu from DeBragga for zwiebelrostbraten
But let’s not pretend: in Austria, there are nearly as many cuts used for this dish as there are chefs.
Even the degree of doneness is not standardized.
Floured steaks sautéing in butter and oil
The dish usually begins with steaks getting crispy-brown in a sauté pan, before going into the oven on a sheet pan.
Sautéed steaks ready for the oven
And that’s where the doneness sweepstakes begins! Some cooks prefer to keep them rare; some prefer medium; some like a stewier quality in the dish and cook them well done.
Whatever the doneness decision is…there must be fried onions!
Thinly sliced onions frying in lots of oil
After massive quantities of onions are fried, they serve–at least in my version!–two essential purposes.
The first of these is enriching the sauce. The steak pan is deglazed, a brown sauce is created, and it cooks for quite a while…with fried onions in it, to give the sauce a crazy-brown-onion taste.
Fried onions going into the pan sauce
When the sauce is properly onion-ized…
Cooked-down onions in pan sauce
…the whole creation is velvetized with wanton knobs of butter. And that’s when the steaks emerge from the oven for a quick turn in the deep, brown sauce. After placing the sauce-enrobed steaks on plates…you anoint them with even more sauce! And then, the crowning glory…you mount a high tangle of burnished onions over each steak!
Reality check: I have been describing my own personal zwiebelrostbraten. As I indicated, you will find variations all over Austria (and in Stuttgart, Germany, where the dish is also popular). But this one, for me, epitomizes the mad lustiness of Austrian cuisine, as well as the profound attention to technical fine points.
If you’re not counting calories…it is magnificent!
My brand-new recipe is available to all members of the David Rosengarten Wagyu-of-the-Month Club…as will be 11 more recipes for the rest of the year! For more details, click here.
Guten appetit!
