In France they would call these saucissons. In the United States we would call them Jimmy Dean’s breakfast sausage. These are the real things. Nurnberger Bratwursts. I should know.
If you were paying attention to my previous ramblings, you will know that I’m a sausage man. I could almost say that I’ve never met a sausage I didn’t like, although I’m ready to rule out Blutwurst (blood sausage) and Leberwurst (liver sausage). Otherwise, I’ve got a lot in common with 82 million Germans.
Today I broke a string of 8 consecutive meals in which wursts (sausages) of various stripes played a starring role. So far I’ve had the classic Bratwurst and it’s first cousin, Currywurst. I thought you would ask. Currywurst is Bratwurst stuffed into a meat grinder looking machine and cut into 1 inch chunks then daubed with a catsup/curry powder mixture and served on a small paper plate and eaten with tooth picks. Aren’t you glad you asked. I’ve also had Knockwurst, the short, fat, pale looking ones, Frankfurter-bockwurst (we call them weiners) and the star of the show….Nurnburger Rostbratwurst. They are small, about the size of your pinky finger and generally grilled over an open flame and served with a heaping pile of sauerkraut and creamy horseradish. Yummmm! An alternative rendition is to steam them with onions. Oddly they are always served in multiples of six. Go figure. They are eaten for breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, or for dinner. I’ve done exactly that.
I’ve now eaten 13 meals in Germany (not including the many business dinners I’ve had here over the years). I’ve eaten food from hotel dinning rooms, tourist bistros, biergartens, street vendors, and train station stalls, so I think you’ll agree that I qualify as an expert on German food. I’ve now digested (no pun intended) all of my foodie experience in Germany and synthesized it into the essence of German foods…in two words…PORK FAT.
There I’ve said it. Anybody who knows anything about German food will tell you exactly the same thing. Yes, I know they have other stuff here. They even have vegetables, but I’ve never seen one, unless you count potatoes as vegetables. I’ll admit that they do have beef on some of the menus in less respectable places, but you’ll never see any self respecting German eating a beef steak even with lots of fat. I’m ignoring noodles and dumplings (more on dumplings latter) because I’m sure they are secretly related to pork fat or they are actually cooked in pork fat. If pressed, I’d admit to having seen fish in some of the train station counters, but I’m not willing to give much weight to large slabs of pickled fish on a bun as real food.
The real deal is pig meat, pork products, schweinfleisch, and the more fat the better. Yesterday, after having spent hours strolling the pedestrian streets of Old Town Nuremberg, I developed a craving for sausage. There were a plethora of choices. In fact, places serving wursts of various stripes were as frequent and prominent as Walgreens or branch banks in the US. I finally settled on a likely place with the promising name of Bratwurst Rosen. It was just off the platz where I had puzzled over a bank holiday/religious ceremony/festival which concluded with much sausage eating and beer drinking. The more prosperous looking of the crowd seemed to be drifting toward Bratwurst Rosen. I entered tentatively, because one never knows. It was awash with Germans, mostly in large groups, but a waiter took pity and guided me to a well situated table. I sized up the crowd and calculated that I was well below the median in both age and weight. You know how old I am, but I’m not going to reveal my weight. I’ll only say that it takes some fairly large folks to put me in the bottom half.
A young, very large and very nice waitress approached with an English menu. How do you think she knew? I asked for suggestions as it looked as if she had sampled most of the items more than once. She recommended the liver soup saying it was a Franconian specialty. I had no idea what Franconian meant, but it sounded important, so I ordered it. Although I’d fully intended to continue my record of consecutive meals eating sausage, I pointed to a large chunk of meat going by, and I said, “what’s that”. She said something I couldn’t understand, but decided I had to have it. She returned forthwith with a giant basket of bread and the liver soup which included a large brown, dumpling looking thing in the middle of the bowl. Further investigation confirmed my wurst fear (get it). It was a liver dumpling. Now I’d never had a liver dumpling before, nor will I ever again, so I can tell you that it tasted exactly like the liver my mother tried, but did not succeed, to make me eat. The broth was ok, but I think the waitress was a little put out that I seemed not very excited about her Franconian specialty. The meat turned out to be, no surprise here, pork. It was a bone-in pork shoulder in beer sauce with a potato dumpling about the size of a tennis ball. The pork, I estimate, weighed in at about three pounds. It was tender to the point of falling off the bone, and the beer sauce was to die for, but the piece de resistance was that there was about a two inch layer of pork crackling holding the meat together. How often do you get a chance at pork crackling. I couldn’t eat it all, and I didn’t have anything to carry it in, but I wanted to take it home with me.
The dumpling is another story. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will tell you that if you took a lump of play-do about the size of a tennis ball, infused it with corn meal, and added a small dose of Elmer’s glue, basted it in two sticks of butter, blast roasted it at 500 degrees for 15 seconds, you would have the perfect potato dumpling.
This is my last night in Germany, maybe forever, and I’m trying to decide between ham hocks with sauerkraut or Wisenwurst with noodles. I’ll let you know. Maybe sausage.
ps. I had one last currywurst at the airport. It was great.
