Germany Recipes – Franconian Sausages & Sauerkraut

Ingredients

For the sauerkraut:
5 kg white cabbage
100g salt

For Franconian sauerkraut: 
1 kg sauerkraut
1 onion
5 juniper berries
1 apple
250gm water
150gm white wine
200 gm smoked belly of pork (bacon)
6 tbsp goose fat

For Franconian sausages:
600 gm neck of the pork
400 gm belly of the pork
100 gm milk
1-2 eggs
19 gm salt
2 gm pepper
1.5 gm macys (flower of nutmeg)
1 gm cardamom (nutmeg skin)
1 gm marjoram
10 gm white wine
mustard

For the sausage skins:
pork intestines 28-30 mm thickness

Method

For the Sauerkraut:

1. Discard the leaves of the white cabbage and grate it.

2. Then put layers of cabbage and sprinkle salt alternately in a terracotta pot and stamp the mixture with a stick until the juice is over the shredded cabbage.

3. Cover the pot with a cloth and weighed down with planks and stones. This mixture is then left in a cool dark place for 4 to 6 weeks, before cooking it.

4. Fry some onion in 6 tablespoons of goose fat until it goes a little bit brown. Add the sauerkraut and heat it through for five minutes.

5. Once it’s nice and hot pour a cup of water, put the lid back on and let it cook for twenty minutes.

6. Then add the chopped apple, 5 juniper berries and the bacon. Stir it well, add a bit more water and a big dash of white wine and cook it for further thirty five minutes. Just before it’s nearly cooked, add a bit more wine.

For the Sausages:

1. Cut the neck and the belly of pork and grind it into a bowl. Add some herbs including Macys (flower of the nutmeg), cardamom, Marjoram, a good pinch of salt and pepper, and mix it all with your hands.

2. Then add two eggs and mix it again, some milk and mix it one last time.

3. Pull over the bowl with the casings made of pigs gut. Pick one out and find the end of the skin. Then, take a funnel and slip the casing over the end in one deft movement. Stuff the casing with the mixture, before tying it off to make a sausage.

4. Once all the sausages are ready, fry them in a little oil in a frying pan. Serve them with steaming sauerkraut, mustard and a good bottle of beer.

Recipe from Georg Scharf (Butcher – Fleischer Fachgeschaft, Bischberg)