This hearty beef goulash is made with 30% beef. Onions, potatoes, carrots, peppers, garlic and tomato purée are then added during the braising process and seasoned with red wine and fine spices.

The exceptionally tasty food from the Franconian Benedictine Abbey of Plankstetten all comes from its own production. The monastery has made an excellent name for itself over the past few years by consistently practising organic farming and focusing on a regional circular economy. Farming is carried out on a manageable scale: Simmental suckler cows live and thrive in open stables and pastures, and their calves are fed every last drop of their mother's milk. There is no dairy farming beyond this. There are also oxen, breeding bulls and fattening pigs in a barn built in 2011 with spacious exercise pens, a few ewes of the endangered Coburg fox breed and a small enclosure with fallow deer.

Seeds and seedlings are organically propagated, green genetic engineering is taboo. Pests in the greenhouses are controlled with beneficial insects such as lacewings or predatory mites, crop protection nets are used outdoors and weeds are removed mechanically. In the bakery and butcher's shop, the question was asked: "How did the ancients do it?" The results are tasty breads made according to old recipes and from grains such as emmer, one of the oldest cultivated grains, which is particularly rich in protein and minerals, has a low yield and requires special effort. In the monastery butchery - unusual also because of its short distances, there is no transportation of livestock - the traditional warm meat process is used. This makes the addition of artificial phosphates or flavor enhancers superfluous and makes use of the natural binding capacity. The maturing room is smaller than a monastery cell. In Plankstetten, a sense of proportion is exercised both in agriculture and in the preservation of the historic monastery buildings, which has been steadily advanced in recent years. "It is the earth on which we live," says Abbot Beda Maria Sonneberg, "and it must be in our interest to treat it carefully and well."

Sales description:

Organic beef goulash

Ingredients:

30% beef*, drinking water, onions*, tomato puree*, red wine*, spices*, potatoes*, carrots*, paprika*, garlic*, rock salt. (* from certified organic farming)

EU identity mark:

DE BY 30170 EG

Origin / provenance:

Germany

Organic control body:

DE-ÖKO-006

Responsible food business operator:

Klosterbetriebe Plankstetten GmbH
Klosterplatz 1
92334 Berching
Germany