When I was in Germany recently, I tried the local Nuremburg sausages, which are a skinny little bratwurst that taste so good. Now, I can get “bratwurst” anywhere around here at home, but would I actually eat it? Hell, no! Not unless it was organic! So that means I have to make my own. But I’m a little bit of a lazy sausage maker, in that I am not really ready to deal with the whole concept of sausage casings—either animal or vegetable. So what I did was make the recipe and then form them into patties, which were good like burgers. I also made a bratwurst and pasta dinner—which was totally yum. (I added whole wheat pasta, green peppers, fennel, parsley, and a bit of Romano cheese—kind of like a German-Italian hookup).
It took me a while to figure out how to use my meat grinder. But now that I have, I think I will use it a lot. It’s manual, and easy to set up and to clean. I got my meat grinder from Amazon.com. Who knew!
Just make sure the meat is cooked all the way through, since it is pork. And the secret to Nuremburg brats, I found out, is marjoram.
Bratwurst
Ingredients:
2 pounds ground pork (I used a shoulder cut)
½ pound ground smoked bacon OR 1 Tablespoon liquid smoke
2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon ground white pepper
2 Tablespoons marjoram
Directions:
1. Grind the pork and the bacon (I used liquid smoke and it worked fine—didn’t have bacon at the time).
2. Add the spices.
3. Mix! And fry it up in a pan with olive oil.
This makes either 8 burgers or a nice big pasta dinner.
Is there a safe liquid smoke?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_smoke
I don’t understand why you grind already ground meat. Is there a reason for this?