Sheboygan brats

One of the things my wife laments most about living in California is the lack of good Sheboygan bratwurst. Part of her family is from Sheboygan and she grew up eating the things in Green Bay. A number of years ago, we had a place locally that made brats that were much like she got at home but that place closed when the original owner decided to retire and his son had no interest in keeping the business going. Yesterday, I was catching up with Hank Shaw's blog "Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook" (a James Beard Award winner and a great read) when I noticed that he had posted a recipe for Sheboygan brats he got when he lived back in Wisconsin. Hank is a very good cook, so I figured I'd give this recipe a try. It uses pork (or veal or turkey), pork belly, ground ginger, marjoram, nutmeg, caraway, mustard seeds, salt, pepper, heavy cream, and dry milk powder. It's a bit fussier than the Italian sausage I've made in the past. You grind some of the meat with a coarse die and some with the fine die. Everything's kept at ~35° F while grinding and mixing. Once the skins are stuffed, you poach the sausages to set them. I made a batch today. I boiled a few up (not in beer, sadly) and browned them in a hot pan before serving with a white bean/chard stew. (Again, hardly traditional but I didn't have the proper rolls for grilled brats and this was really a test run, anyway.) They were very tasty. Not completely up to her standards, but my wife liked them better than anything else we get around here.

She'll be going back to the homeland in a couple of weeks, so her assignment is to polish up her palate on a couple of their brats and report back on some adjustments to the spicing.

Yeah, every year we'd go up to Sheboygan for the brats. You could tell you were getting closer by the biblical columns of smoke rising from all the folks out on the sidewalk grilling the brats. Small town America Heartland at its finest.

We also did the obligatory fish fries every Friday. It was still a tradition then, big time, although it has subsided an awful lot the last several years.

I was there when the whitefish were still big too. First time I ever had planked whitefish. Then whitefish got scarce.

My favorite brats ever, though (yeah, I'm telling the story again) was in that truck stop on the south side where they served brat-burgers on regular buns, with thick meaty, salty navy bean soup.

And since I was either a starving college kid or a thrifty teacher, George Webb and I got together pretty often. Their 'chili/spaghetti soup was...um, different. I don't think they ever took the pot off the stove, just kept refilling it with new odds and ends whenever it started to get low.

Perfect that recipe, Mike, then throw some in the freezer and I'll stop by with a sixpack of Spotted Cow for a nosh next time I breeze through Sacro.

You're on, Hoke! (I'll do them up properly in beer.)

[Jenise]

I've never had a shegoygan brat, nor did I realize what a local delicacy it was, but I'm in the market for brats for a wine tasting next month and desperately wanting to *not* resort to Johnsonville brand or whatever Costco carries, if it's different. I've been wondering if we should consider making our own, in fact--which I would do if the couple who has a really cool sausage stuffer here in the nabe are going to be around and attending this event. If not, wouldn't even consider it. Coincidentally I found Hank Shaw's blog myself awhile back, tried to follow his instructions for making olives. It didn't work out, but I'm sure that's my fault and not his--I really liked what I read on his site.

What device do you use for stuffing sausages?

Mike,
My husband grew up in Kiel, Wisconsin and also thinks the Sheboygan brat is the standard to match. I would suggest trying the tiniest bit of citric acid in the mix. It brightens all the flavors. Be careful if you've never used citric acid before...it is potent. I use it alot when I want some acid without extra moisture.

I've never been to Wisconsin (almost - I made it to Great Lakes Naval Base when my son completed boot camp a few years ago). I've also never had a brat that impressed me. I'm a big fan of Italian and Polish sausage and I've had some well made local hot dogs that surpass any brats I've had. I can only conclude that I've ever had good ones. The recipe looks interesting and I saved it. The spice mixture is similar to ones in recipes I have for frankfurters and bangers. The banger recipes I have call for lemon zest, so maybe Christina is onto something with the citric acid suggestion.
What is the best way to serve brats? On a roll with mustard or horseradish? Grilled? With noodles and sauerkraut?

Jenise - We use the Kitchenaid attachments for grinding the meat and for stuffing the sausages. It takes a little getting used to. I hadn't done this in a while and I'd lost my touch in getting the sausages "stuffed enough but not overstuffed". I broke a couple but just emptied them out and ran them through again with fresh casings. Also, if you don't end up with any other options, then Johnsonville is considered reasonably decent for a mass market product.

Christina - thanks for the suggestion! I'll give that a try next time.

Howie - I'm a little ambivalent on these myself as I prefer Italian sausage. When they're good, though, they're pretty darn good. In Wisconsin, they do them a couple of ways. I think my father-in-law just grills them and serves them. Some people poach them in beer and then grill them. Others grill and then put them in hot (but not boiling) beer before serving. Any of those methods should work pretty well. (Here's a site that describes their versions of the beer method.)They are served on firm, round rolls that are also difficult to find outside of Wisconsin. We've just used whatever roll we can find that looks about right. My wife's family puts mustard and a whole green onion on the roll along with the brat. The onion is a little much for me but they love them that way. I think they'd be great with noodles and kraut but I get frowned at when I make such suggestions.

In support of what Paul W. said: the rolls are important. And I like the green onions too.

First ate brats (and several other wursts) when I was a teenager living in Germany. The breads they use over there are "brotchen"---'little breads'---that are dense and chewy and lightly glazed with egg before baking. Standard food in Germany in trinkhalle/kiosks,where they are grilled fresh, put in a brotchen and served up on a little slip of paper with a large dollop of either horseradish/dijon or whole grain mustard, depending on what part of Deutschland you're in. And sometimes the aforesaid stalk of green onion.

Several midwesterners (I suspect largely from the Scandinavian immigrants there) rave about potato bread rolls for brats.

An alternate way of doing it is in Franconia/Northern Bavaria, they sometimes make either bratwurst or weisswurst in a cast iron skillet pan, seethed in vinegar and julienned onions. It is tastier than it sounds; trust me. One creative cook I knew liked to use different fruit flavored vinegars (sorta like the Cuisine Perel stuff) for doing this. An Italian chef once made wurst something like this but used mostardo. Superb!

[Jenise]

Jenise - We use the Kitchenaid attachments for grinding the meat and for stuffing the sausages. It takes a little getting used to. I hadn't done this in a while and I'd lost my touch in getting the sausages "stuffed enough but not overstuffed". I broke a couple but just emptied them out and ran them through again with fresh casings. Also, if you don't end up with any other options, then Johnsonville is considered reasonably decent for a mass market product.

Ah, I wondered. My friends who make sausages hated their kitchen aid attachment and bought something else off ebay that they love--turned out, in fact, that the seller was right here in Bellingham but they didn't realize it when elected to "Buy It Now". I'll never make enough to warrant investing in extra machinery myself, but have hesitated at using the KA based on Brian and Kathy's description of how difficult it was. With their new device, something a butcher shop might use I guess, they did in 20 minutes what it took two hours to do with the KA. Made me wonder if they did something wrong, as I can't imagine anyone using the KA if it's that slow and difficult.

Re Johnsonville--probably so, but in my neighborhood, they're overused at potlucks--need to get something that would be a little more special.

Ah, I wondered. My friends who make sausages hated their kitchen aid attachment and bought something else off ebay that they love--turned out, in fact, that the seller was right here in Bellingham but they didn't realize it when elected to "Buy It Now". I'll never make enough to warrant investing in extra machinery myself, but have hesitated at using the KA based on Brian and Kathy's description of how difficult it was. With their new device, something a butcher shop might use I guess, they did in 20 minutes what it took two hours to do with the KA. Made me wonder if they did something wrong, as I can't imagine anyone using the KA if it's that slow and difficult.

Re Johnsonville--probably so, but in my neighborhood, they're overused at potlucks--need to get something that would be a little more special.

Hmm. I've never been much bothered by using the Kitchenaid for this. As I said, it takes a little technique but not much. The process is more time-consuming than with the pro-level stuffers that will do ten feet of sausage in about a minute but it's never taken me two hours to do that much. More like a half hour or so. If I made a lot of sausage then the money and space investment in a real sausage stuffer might be worth it but for as often as I use it, the Kitchenaid attachment is fine.

Two weeks ago made 11# all lamb Merguez sausages using small diameter sheep casings. The Kitchen Aid worked fine after we got the hang of the smaller, more delicate casings which were perfect for party serving size. The Mourad recipe I followed called for citric acid and when I tasted the mix I recognized the tang that some local brats have...thus the citric acid idea. I have not tried it myself for brats but intend to later this summer.
As far as the Merguez goes I would do a less coarse grind next time. I used lamb leg and pork fat in a ratio of 2.5# to 1.5 #. For the size of the casings a finer grind would have been better. Sausage making IS an art.

[Jenise]

At a store on Orcas Island the other day I found brats from a German sausage maker in Seattle called Uli's. The last item on the ingredients list? Lemon. I bought them, curious, as lemon isn't something I've noted about brats before but am excited to experience in the Uli's. Btw, we're also getting together with another couple tomorrow to experience more bratwurst and bockwurst from several Seattle-area German butchers. They're hosting, and I was firmly instructed to come empty handed. Well, yesterday we stopped at Petco to pick up cat food, and guess what I found there that the other couple's two shelties will LOVE, and that's right en pointe with the day's meal plan? A toy that looks like a large sausage tied at both ends with "BARKWURST" sewn across the length of it.

I looked up Sheboygan brats and found a couple of brands you can buy online -- I didn't copy down the URL but it would be easy enough to Google. I looked at the ingredients list for the commercial S.B. and they DO include citric acid.

in this case citric acid = lemon with a punch. Quite hard to judge amount though. FWIW... I used 1/2 tsp for 3.5 # meat in the lamb merguez mix