• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • Contributors
  • Work With Us
  • CONTACT US
  • Blog
  • Our Sponsors

CaliforniaGermans

All Things German In California

  • Life in California
    • German Food -Bakeries|Markets|Delis
    • Restaurants – German|Austrian|Swiss
    • German Schools- Kindergarten|PreSchools|GradeSchools|
    • German Clubs & Community
    • German Traditions in CA
    • CA For Kids
    • Tips & Guidelines
    • German Cooking & Baking
    • Events & More
    • KONSULATE
  • Education
    • German Schools SoCal
    • German Schools NorCal
    • Kindergruppen
  • Travel
    • Travel
    • Travel CA
  • Expat Stories
    • XPAT Spotlight
  • Lese-Ecke
  • JOB BOARD
  • Forum

Bavarian Pork Roast

Bavarian Oktoberfest Pork Roast Recipe

September 25, 2020 by Cornelia Leave a Comment

Invite Oktoberfest into your home. The perfect time for a Bavarian Pork Roast.

It’s Oktoberfest time, only that the traditional Oktoberfest in Munich won’t open its doors this year due to the worldwide pandemic. 

We didn’t want this to deter us from enjoying some Oktoberfest vibes, however, and decided to celebrate with a Bavarian Schweinsbraten or also called Krustenbraten; simply a pork roast with a deliciously crunchy, crackling pork rind.

Most of the necessary ingredients are some we usually have at home already, like onions, carrots, and of course beer – lots of it. The challenge you might run into is to get the right cut of pork, particularly one with the skin on! We found the latter to be quite a challenge. 

The perfect cut – Boneless pork shoulder with skin 

After calling the best butchers in town, including some from which restaurants purchase their meat, we learned that we could get a hold of a pork shoulder but only with the bone still in and definitely no skin. One of the butchers even told us that unless we knew some independent, smaller butcher personally we will have a hard time finding a pork roast with the skin on. “It’s just not produced that way here and we all more or less buy from the same meat plant or big suppliers”. 

Aha! Well, our next call was to a German butcher in town. They had to have what I needed, no?

Unfortunately, they didn’t, at least not on the day I wanted it. The lady however gave me a great tip: “Go try Stater Brother’s. Their party roast”. Really!? 

How right she was! Stater Brother’s Party Roast fulfilled at least one crucial part. It’s a pork shoulder with the bone still in but with the skin on. Yay!! My crackling pork rind was saved.

How to get the famous Schweinebratenkruste = crackling pork rind

Now I had my meat and it was time to start preparing our feast. 

The easiest way to give your pork roast’s skin the neatly shaped diamond pattern is to cut it after having put the roast upside down, skin first, into a pot of boiling hot water . Keep the water low so that you immerse only the skin and keep it there for about 15 minutes. After that take the meat out, tap it dry with a piece of kitchen paper and you are ready to get to work. Your knife will glide effortlessly through the pork skin to give it the desired diamond pattern.

Preparing for a hearty beer sauce – Use lots of dark beer

To get the yummy beer sauce that tastes so delicious with potato dumplings, have a few bottles of beer ready to use. 

After you prepared the pork skin (see above), your roast is ready to be put in the oven. Have the oven preheated to about 350 F, season the pork roast on all sides with salt pepper, sweet paprika and cumin, put it in a roaster, and up it goes into the oven with the prepared pork skin facing up.

After the meat has roasted for about 10 minutes, place the onions, leek and carrots around the roast and add the first bottle of beer. Make sure the liquid is about one to two inches high in your roaster, especially covering all the vegetable. (Burnt onions make the beer sauce bitter!)

Keep the pork roast in the oven for about 1 1/2 hours while routinely adding more beer to the liquid.

Finally, to get the beer sauce’s smooth consistency, pour the liquid into a strainer once the roast has finished cooking. You will need the help of a fork to mash and push the vegetable mixture through the strainer. And, voilà, there is your savory beer sauce!

Don’t forget the Knödel & Brezen – Potato Dumplings & Pretzels, a MUST

In the meantime prepare the Knödel, the potato dumplings that make your traditional Schweinbraten- pork roast dish authentic. I didn’t make my Knödel from scratch, I have to admit, but used the “Rohe Klösse” mix, usually from Knorr. In this case, I only found it from Kartoffelland.

The last touch is a Bavarian Brezen (pretzel), which can’t be missing from a feast like this. If you are lucky you will have a German store near you that can help you stock up on this Bavarian treat. You can never have enough of this German staple food in your home anyway!

Your Bavarian Oktoberfest Pork Roast is ready. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your feast with a nice cool glass of beer!

Ingredients for the traditional Bavarian Schweinebraten – Pork Roast 

  • ca. 2 pounds of pork shoulder with skin (preferably without the bone)
  • salt, pepper, sweet paprika, and cumin
  • 1 onion
  • 1 stick of leek 
  • 1 carrot
  • 3-4 bottles of dark beer (what’s not getting used, drink it. Prost!)

Let us know in the comments how your Schweinebraten turned out in case you tried this recipe.

Images: All food images ©CaliforniaGermans; Oktoberfest lettering image©pixabay.com

Filed Under: Culture, German Cooking & Baking, German Foods & Markets, News Tagged With: Bavarian Pork Roast, German recipes, Oktoberfest, Schweinebraten, Tradition

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us Online

  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Join us on Facebook

Join us on Facebook

Subscribe to our News

Featured Sponsors

Notice

Please note that CaliforniaGermans is not affiliated with the California Staatszeitung. Thank you!

Featured Post –

Christmas cookies - California

Zimt Bakery ships Christmas Plätzchen in California

No time to bake “Weihnachtsplätzchen”? No problem. Let Zimt Bakery take care of it this year! The … [Read More...] about Zimt Bakery ships Christmas Plätzchen in California

Featured Posts – Travel

Traveling in Times of Covid-19: Regulations & more

Are you unsure if you can travel to Germany this summer? What about your … [Read More...] about Traveling in Times of Covid-19: Regulations & more

  • Travel As a Dual Citizen. Do You Know Which Passport to Use When?

More Posts from this Category

Follow us on Twitter

My Tweets

Advertisements

RSS DW-Top News Germany

  • Elite German soldier goes on trial over arms, explosives cache
    A member of the KSK elite commando force has appeared in court, months after weapons, explosives and neo-Nazi materials were found at his property, near Leipzig. He confessed to using the equipment for training.
  • European Parliament calls for halt on Nord Stream 2 construction after Navalny arrest
    The European Parliament has demanded construction stop on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The controversial pipeline will double the capacity of an already existing natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

Footer

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

important links

Privacy

Terms & Disclosure

Copyright

©2009-2020 CaliforniaGermans. All Rights Reserved

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Privacy Policy

Categories

Archives

Work with Us

RSS Links

  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Newsletter

Follow Us

  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2021 · News Pro on Genesis Framework · Log in