Beef and Sauerkraut Dinner

Negative twelve on Wednesday. The cold is a wall, a physical thing you walk into when you open the door, and the walking-into is violent in the way that only Nebraska cold is violent — not windy, not dramatic, just present, absolute, the kind of cold that takes your breath and holds it and gives it back in a cloud of vapor that freezes before it reaches the sky. I plugged in the block heater at 4 a.m. and started the truck at 5 and the engine turned over slowly, reluctantly, like a sleeping animal that has been asked to wake in the dark.

I hauled to Sioux Falls — a one-day run, up and back, the highway white and glittering with road salt and the specific loneliness of a winter highway where the only other vehicles are trucks and snowplows and the occasional car driven by someone who either has an emergency or a poor understanding of weather. The slow cooker had ham and potato soup — cubed ham, diced potatoes, cream, celery, onion. A thick soup, a warm soup, a soup that fights the cold from the inside like an internal furnace.

The cookbook proposal is taking shape. I work on it in the truck, between loads, in the parking lots, in the quiet hours when the driving is done and the thinking begins. I am describing my recipes the way I describe my life — plainly, without embellishment, with the understanding that the plainness is the appeal and the appeal is the honesty. A recipe for chili made in a truck cab is not a recipe for chili made in a home kitchen, and the difference is the story, and the story is the thing I am selling, if 'selling' is the right word, which it might not be, because what I am really doing is sharing, and sharing and selling are different animals, though they often travel the same road.

I made chili. Because January. Because cold. Because the chili is the constant and the constant is the comfort and the comfort is the thing I can offer this family when I cannot offer certainty or warmth or the end of the pandemic. I can offer chili. The chili is enough.

The chili came and went, and the soup did too, and when the week stretched into another haul and another 4 a.m. start, I needed something different in the pot — something with a little more weight to it, something that could hold its own against a day that started in the dark and ended the same way. Beef and sauerkraut has that quality: it’s not flashy, it doesn’t ask anything of you, it just sits there in the slow cooker doing its work the same way you do yours, and when you come back to it, it’s ready, and that readiness is its own kind of grace.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 8 hrs | Total Time: 8 hrs 15 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 lbs beef chuck roast, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 can (14 oz) sauerkraut, drained and rinsed
1 medium onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup beef broth
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 lb baby potatoes, halved

Instructions

Season the beef. Pat the beef pieces dry and season on all sides with salt and pepper.
Layer the slow cooker. Place the sliced onion and garlic in the bottom of a 6-quart slow cooker. Add the potatoes in an even layer on top.
Add beef and sauerkraut. Lay the seasoned beef pieces over the potatoes. Spread the drained sauerkraut evenly over the beef.
Mix the cooking liquid. In a small bowl, stir together the beef broth, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, and caraway seeds. Pour over everything in the slow cooker.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 7–8 hours, or on HIGH for 4–5 hours, until the beef is fork-tender and the potatoes are cooked through.
Taste and serve. Stir gently, taste for seasoning, and serve directly from the slow cooker with crusty bread if you have it.

Nutrition (per serving)

Beef and Sauerkraut Dinner — The Slow Cooker Keeps the Cold Out