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Rouladen is a popular German dish.  It is a beef rollup filled with pickles, bacon and mustard.  This is a recipe for Instant Pot Rouladen.

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Our family loves German cuisine.  However, German restaurants are scarce in San Diego.  The only two we frequent are Tip Top Meats in Carlsbad by Legoland and Kaiserhof in Ocean Beach.  These are great restaurants, but to satisfy our love of German food we have learned to make our own dishes.

Like many German dishes, rouladen is fairly complicated.  It is not difficult to make, but it does take some prep work.

To develop my rouladen recipe I looked at three major sources:

• The Daring Gourmet, a great source for German and Eastern European recipes
• Just Like Oma, Quick German Recipes
• A YouTube video from chef Uwe Rudnick

I incorporated techniques from all three recipes to come up with a dish I thought my family would enjoy.  Oma, at the Quick German recipe site uses an Instant Pot.  She claims that there are many ways to cook rouladen, but in Germany they are big fans of using a pressure cooker (other methods include stovetop, oven and slow cooker).

Oma says that the pressure cooker is her favorite method because they come out moist and tender.  I definitely agree.  Pressure cooking in an Instant Pot is not only more convenient but it can really add flavor to a dish like rouladen.

I followed chef Uwe’s advice for cutting the bacon into small bits and browning it ahead of time.  Other recipes call for placing a full slice of bacon on the beef and rolling it up.

Almost all recipes agree that beef rouladen should be made with thinly sliced top round.  Our local grocery store regularly sales top round in thin slices.  We only need to pound them down until they are about 1/8 to 1/4 inch think.  The meat is sliced into rectangles about 4” by 6”.

Beef rouladen is a stuffed dish where the ingredients are added to a flat piece of meat that is then rolled up. There are a lot of things that you can add to rouladen, but I kept it simple with a layer of mustard, a quarter slice of a whole dill pickle, bacon and onions.

The Instant Pot is nice because you can make the sauce/gravy right in the pot.  When the meat finishes cooking you strain the sauce and thicken with cornstarch.  In theory you could use the Instant Pot for everything but I found it is easier to do the browning in a separate skillet.

In our family I have estimated that each roll requires one-third a pound of top round.  With two pounds we make six rolls and that will feed our family of four.  Some recipes call for two rolls per person but for us that is too much, especially with sides.

We have quite a few German sides we prepare.  Most of the time we are happy with basic egg noodles, but occasionally we will get out our spaetzle maker and make that popular German noodle dish.  Other great sides include red cabbage and German potato salad.

Cole Cooks: German Spaetzle Recipe

Cole Cooks: German Red Cabbage Recipe

My two favorite German dishes are rouladen and sauerbraten.  Sauerbraten is more of a challenge because it takes at least 3 days.  Rouladen is a more convenient go to for a family meal.

Cole Cooks: German Sauerbraten Recipe

Instant Pot Rouladen

This is a classic German Beef Rouladen, a beef roll stuffed with pickles, bacon and onions. This Instant Pot Rouladen uses the pressure cooker to get the meat perfectly moist and tender

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Prep Time 1 hour hr

Cook Time 1 hour hr

Course Main Course

Cuisine German

Servings 4 people

Ingredients

  

Beef Roll

• 2 pounds top round steak thinly sliced
• 6 slices bacon cubed
• 1 onion sliced
• 2-3 whole dill pickles quartered and thinly sliced lengthwise
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 3 tablespoons mustard
• 2 tablespoon vegetable oil

Gravy

• 3 large carrots roughly chopped
• 3 stalks celery roughly chopped
• 1 onion roughly chopped
• 4 cloves garlic minced
• 2 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup red wine
• 2 cup beef broth
• Cornstarch or flour

Instructions

 

• In skillet or Instant Pot set to Sauté. Add cubed bacon and onions and brown. Remove and set aside to cool.
• Flatten beef to 1/8 to ¼ inch. Cut beef into about 4” by 6” rectangles. Each rectangle should be about 1/3 pound of beef.
• Spread 1 teaspoon mustard on each rectangle. Season with salt and pepper. Add pickles, bacon and onions to middle of rectangle. Roll up like a burrito and seal with toothpick, skewer or string.
• Set Instant Pot to Sauté. Add beef rolls and brown on all sides. Remove beef and set aside. Leave meat drippings and do not clean pot.
• To make sauce add onions, carrots, garlic and celery to meat drippings and cook for about 5 minutes. Add tomato paste and red wine and deglaze pot.
• Add beef, bay leaf and beef broth to Instant Pot. Set Instant Pot to high pressure for 20 minutes. Allow to natural release for 20 minutes.
• Remove meat to serving platter. Strain sauce to remove large chunks of carrots, celery and onion. Thicken sauce to desired consistency with a mixture of cornstarch/water (1 part cornstarch/2 part water) or flour/butter (equal part flour and butter).

Keyword Beef Recipe, German Recipe, Instant Pot, Instant Pot Rouladen, Rouladen

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