Authentic-ish German

A Roulade is a thin slice of beef spread with mustard, wrapped round bacon, onion and a gherkin, tied, browned and braised for two hours in a dark gravy.

Look at that list. The mustard is 60 kcal per 100g. The gherkin is 12. The onion is 40. The beef is already a lean flat slice because it has to roll. The only fat in the whole thing is the bacon inside and the butter in the gravy, and cutting either of them takes perhaps 40 kcal a serving off a dish that is mostly braised beef.

I tried it several ways. Trimming the beef harder made the rolls fall apart. Dropping the bacon took out the thing that makes the middle taste of anything. Building the gravy on stock instead of cream worked, and that swap is already in the kit on page 12, so it does not need a recipe of its own.

Make them properly. Use good mustard, tie them tightly, give them the full two hours, and serve them with red cabbage that has had half the sugar taken out, which is where the saving on that plate actually lives.

There are two German potato salads. The northern one is bound with mayonnaise. The southern one is dressed with hot stock, vinegar, mustard and a little bacon fat.

The swap kit tells you to make the southern one, and that entry is doing all the work there is to do here. It is in chapter 2 because it is a swap, not a recipe: you are not lightening a dish, you are choosing the other regional version, which happens to be better and happens to be lighter.

I drafted a lightened southern salad anyway. It came out 4% below the one it was compared against, which is a rounding difference, and the only way I could make the number look better was to add chicken to it, at which point it stops being a potato salad.

Make the Bavarian one. Slice the potatoes hot so they drink the stock, be sparing with the bacon fat, and eat it warm.

Lentil soup with vinegar. Lentils, root vegetables, a little smoked sausage, a slug of vinegar at the end. It comes in at 436 kcal a serving with 31g of protein in it.

I drafted a lighter version and it came out at 484, which is heavier, and the protein for the calories went DOWN. Both of those are the wrong direction, and it took me a while to work out why: there is nothing in a Linsensuppe doing a job that a lighter ingredient could do instead. The sausage is the seasoning, the lentils are the point, and the vinegar is free.

This is one of the best everyday dinners in Europe and it does not need me. Make it, use good vinegar, and put a slice of dark rye next to it.

Green beans, a little smoked bacon, savory, done. 159 kcal a serving, of which the beans are 31 and the herb is nothing.

Render the bacon slowly and pour off what runs, which is swap 2 in the kit, and you have taken out most of what there was to take. Everything else I tried made the dish heavier or barely moved it.

This is a side dish that has been getting the balance right for about 300 years without anybody's help. Make it as it is.

Flour, water, salt, a little yeast, and a dip in lye before it goes in the oven. That is the whole recipe. There is no fat in a pretzel at all beyond whatever is naturally in the flour.

I got a version down by 6 kcal. Six. On a 461 kcal item, which is a rounding difference and not a recipe.

Buy them fresh, eat them the day they are made, and put mustard on them. If you want a lighter one, make them smaller. That is genuinely the only lever there is.