Oktoberfest Brat

In this episode: Oktoberfest bratwurst recipe.

October, the shank of the year. For the past couple of weeks we've had such wonderful weather here, it's been hard to get any work done. But we've managed to have some fun.



In Columbus last weekend mom dug purple potatoes.



We picked pumpkins and wore funny paper hats.



And we grilled some sausages.

Fall and sausage go hand in hand, no wonder Germany has Oktoberfest around this time of year. Our annual sausage fest took this year off, but I did make some special sausage to celebrate the season.

Oktoberfest Bratwurst Recipe

Yield: About 20 sausages

2.2kg (that's 5 lbs.) pork shoulder
40g salt
7g ground white pepper
5g ground ginger
5g whole mustard seed
2g ground nutmeg
bunch of parsley, chopped
110g milk powder
225 ml (1 cup) beer, preferably Marzen style

Medium hog casings, rinsed and soaked for at least an hour.

To make this sausage extra special, I ground it twice. Start by cuting the pork shoulder into manageable chunks and run them through the grinder. For grinding I use the Kitchen Aid food grinder attachment on the stand mixer. Spread out the ground pork on a lined baking sheet and throw it in the freezer for half an hour.



Once crunchy, run it through the grinder again.



Five pounds of pork doesn't fit into my 4.5 quart mixing bowl so I did the next steps in a couple of batches.

Using the paddle attachment mix together the pork and the dry ingredients, then slowly add the beer. Continue to mix until the mixture comes together, 1 to 2 minutes.



Stuff into hog casings and twist.



Serve with German potato salad, braised red cabbage and mustard.

Cheers.

WWBD?

What Would (a) Bacon-nut Do?

Recipes: Kombu + Freekeh cured Bacon (Beta), Bacon Bratwurst.

A few weeks back bacon enthusiasts gathered in the hip Logan Square neighborhood to sample bacon creations from some of Chicago's top chefs, to peruse porcine products from vendors and to worship at the larded altar of cured belly. Yes it was the second running of Baconfest Chicago. I can't really say I'm a bacon enthusiast, it's like saying I'm a breathing enthusiast, but breathing enthusiasts probably participate in marathons...I'm not doing that either... Even though I have pontificated about bacon in previous posts, I didn't think I needed to attend a fetish convention. That is until they announced an amateur bacon bake-off.



Oh boy, I have never entered a contest before, but I excitedly submitted my bacon bratwurst recipe. It proved very popular at Oktoberfest last year.
While I waited for an answer, I plotted my entry. The bacon I make is a pantry staple, nothing extreme or fancy, just bacon, a team player willing to lend it's smoky goodness to any situation. But now.....If I'm gonna be competing with baconphiles, I need to bring my A-game, I need a bacon with unattainable ingredients cured in a an unimaginable brine. I need to go gourmet.



Call in the Rod

So my friend Rod, has a brother, or is it a cousin, who has a farm out by Iowa City, he keeps a few hogs. Rod got one. When he ran out of room in his freezer he sent me a few packages.





Unattainable beautiful side pork ready to cure. Now for the never before imagined brine:





I knew I wanted to use some Kombu for its umami properties (I talk about kelp powder in a previous post), and I wanted to try some Lapsang Souchong tea to add smokiness to the brine. But I forgot to buy tea, so I went with my favorite smoked grain, Freekeh.

Kombu + Freekeh Brine (Beta)

2.5 L water
225g Salt
250g Sugar
150g Freekeh
22g (One sheet) Kombu (kelp)
10 g black peppercorns
5g whole coriander
5g mustard
2 fresh bay leaves (now that's gourmet!)

Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive pot and boil for two minutes. Chill before using.



I covered the bacon with the brine and let it soak overnight. The next day I let the bacon air dry in the fridge before smoking. That night I fired up the smoker. I hot smoked the slices for a half an hour, just enough time to snap a publicity photo (In case I had to sign autographs at the contest).



I'm ready for my close-up.



The bacon is made time to make a contest.

[BEEP BEEP -THE TELETYPE STARTS TAPPING A MESSAGE]


Oh, Someone is ringing across the Telex. It's Andre Vonbaconvitch from BaconFest Chicago:

Hi Mac,

We love these Brats. It was SO close to making the cut. Just wanted you to know it really does look delicious - and we're sorry we couldn't include it this year. Thank you so much for submitting.

[TELETYPE STOPS TAPPING]

[Pause]

Oh.

I made the sausage anyway. Running the stuffer cheers me up. Besides I didn't want have to wear a funny bacon hat.



Drei im weggla.

I was not about to stuff bacon willy-nilly into a sausage just to impress some trenchermen, I wanted a sausage with pedigree, so I cracked open my $5 copy of Larousse Grastronomique. I found many worthy sausages that are made with bacon, but brat from Nuremburg caught my eye. Nuremberg sausages are famous for thin and short. I read on one cultural website that the tourist should say "Drei im weggla! (three in a roll!)" to order this regional specialty. Here's my recipe:

Bacon Bratwurst

4 lbs/1.8Kg ground pork
14 oz/400g bacon (coarsely ground)
27 g salt
7g black pepper
3g marjoram
3g ground mustard
1g thyme
1g mace

water

Beat together all ingredients using a really big spoon or with the paddle attachement on a stand mixer, Add upto a cup of cold water to make a smooth mixture. Stuff into sheep casings. For the authentico look, fry in an Albert Turk Forged Iron Pan, serve three on bun.



I would try again next year, but in the past month I have lost my amateur status. Happy cooking.

Cheers.

Live from Sausage Week: Bratwurst

Three hours, thirty pounds of Bratwurst. I'm sure glad I don't do this for a living. It's hard business. Jerry came over to help and between the two of us we knocked it out.



First we had to cube the pork shoulder, Then we mixed in the seasonings: Salt, white pepper, ginger, nutmeg, caraway and mustard.



Working in 10 pound batches Jerry ran it through the grinder. Then I kneaded the mixture adding a little cream and water.



I mentioned in a previous post that I got casings from a packing house. The advantage to these casing versus asking for some at the grocery is that I was able to get casings long enough to do 10 pounds in one run.





Ok I'm done making sausage. What else do we need to make? Sausage Week Continues.

Thanks for coming over, J.

Cheers.

Chicken Bratwurst

When it comes to the dueling sausages of our house, it's Bratwurst vs. Parsley and Cheese. Usually the P&C wins(Bonne Femme's fave), but this week I had a hankering for for my German friends.

I started to think about it on the way back from my food styling class last Saturday: A nice day, grilled sausages, sauerkraut, some mustard. It's not too much trouble to put together a couple pounds of sausage, right?

Chicken Again?

I used chicken in this recipe because that's what I had on hand. As I have mentioned in previous chicken sausage posts, I start the week with one whole chicken. The first thing I do is bone it and make stock with the bones. I get about a quart of stock from one chicken. Next I use the chicken during the week for whatever, nuggets for the boys, chicken salad, pot pie. By the end of the week if there is any bird left it ends up on pizza or sausage. Enough life lessons, let's go to the boards:

Chicken Bratwurst

989 g (2 lb 3 oz) Chicken, cubed

18 g Salt

1 g ginger, ground

1 g nutmeg, ground

1 g caraway seed, ground

2 g marjoram, dried

10 g powdered milk

Milk or water.

Combine chicken with dry ingredients, allow to marinate for one to four hours, if you have the time, in the fridge. Grind with using the small plate into a chilled bowl. Using a really big wooden spoon stir this mixture and add no more than 125 ml (1/2 cup) or milk or water. Continue stirring until it starts to come together, about 1 minute. Stuff into hog casings, twist into links. Allow sausages to rest, uncovered, in the refrigerator, if you have time. If not, go ahead and grill over indirect heat until done.

Yield: About 8 - 6 inch sausages.

A word about chicken and fat.

I first learned about making sausage from the book Charcuterie, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. Their primer on sausage making stresses the importance of added fats, especially in lean meats such as chicken. I followed the advice of the book religiously, until one day I wanted to make sausage but I didn't have any additional fat. You know what? It turned out great. The Bratwurst recipe above does not call for added fat, however when I said I used a whole chicken the means not only meat but also, skin and fat (okay not giblets, but why not?). And it tastes great. I think the milk powder helps retain moisture so the added fat's only job is to keep it juicy once the sausage has been overcooked (Note: Don't overcook your sausage). My point here is not that I'm not out to create a "Lo-Fat" sausage (My mom calls me butter boy), but that to make sausage at home does not require a special trip to the packing plant: I got my bird out of the cold case, I got the casings ("oh about six feet please") by asking the man behind the meat counter at Walt's. Try it, homemade tastes way better than anything you'll get on a Styrofoam tray. (I'm spouting off again.)

Get out and grill, and be happy.

Cheers.

Tic

I have a tic. I know it because it happens every time, it's involuntary, and it takes a great deal of effort to control it. I usually don't notice it but my wife mentioned it a few days ago as one of the few things I do that embarrasses her. Whenever I am around a person who is speaking with a accent I start speaking with an accent too. It's especially bad when I hear a Brogue or a French accent. I grew up in Ohio, I have no natural twang or twinge, but it feels so good to shape vowel sounds in the back of my throat and roll them through the roof of my mouth and expel them out my mouth and my nose simultaneously. Not only do I affect an accent, but I invert my sentence structures and repetitively say in my head (at least I don't think I say it out loud) "How do you say...(Comment dit?...)."

Now Gentle Reader you may be wondering why you are reading about psychological problems in a blog about sausage, curing, smoking and whatever else blah blah blah. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I entered the culinary program at Kendall College. And the instructor for my Intro to Kitchen class is French. In addition to wanting to repeat everything Chef says avec accent, all the culinary terms we are learning are French too. My tic is a singing vortex, Batonnet (BA- ton-nay), Tourner (tour- nay) over and over in my head. After five hours I'm exhausted. On Monday we are starting with chicken (Poulet!).

School or no school I must get you caught up on what's been happening around the hermitage. A couple of weeks ago, we had our first Oktoberfest Celebration.

My mom and dad came up to help and we turned out twenty pounds of sausage and some sides. We made Bratwurst with marjoram and caraway:

Then, by special request, we made Italian sausage with parsley and cheese (not exactly German, but our most popular sausage this summer)

And we made a weisswurst.

This traditional München sausage is emulsified, meaning it's a bit harder to make. You grind ice with fat and meat then whip it into a mousse like structure. The final product should have the consistency of a hot dog rather than a brat.

I used a recipe from Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman. In the recipe Ruhlman stresses the importance of keeping the emulsion from breaking: "[A broken emulsion] though flavorful...will feel a little like eating clumps of soggy ground-up newspaper." Well I think I didn't whip it long enough; even though it was light, the texture was all wrong. Still we didn't have any trouble eating it all without giving it to the dog.

The first batch I poached I had the oven temp at 350F and some of the sausages burst. I found an oven temp of 300F ideal for poaching.

How about some sides?

Once again I tried to make sauerkraut, but after two weeks of curing it still didn't taste right, so I picked of a few bags of Bobak's.

Mom mixed up a little sodium hydroxide for pretzels.


Bonne Femme made a warm potato salad and apple strudel.

All in all a very good party. We will work out the bugs and have a bigger and better one next year, maybe you can come help make sausage.

Speaking of sausage my mom waited until the next morning to have hers.

As a strict traditionalist she insisted on having her Weißwurst cooked in water and served for breakfast. What's the German word for waffle?

Thanks to everyone (especially mom and dad) for making our first Oktoberfest such a success I hope to see you again next year.

Cheers.