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German recipes

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

‘Spoonfuls of Germany’ Cookbook Offers Up A Regional Taste of Germany

October 2, 2013 by Cornelia Leave a Comment

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The latest edition of the “Spoonfuls of Germany” cookbook takes a different route than most cookbooks offering up popular German recipes.  By splitting the book into four regions, author Nadia Hassani wanted to be able to publish some lesser known recipes that are found throughout the country, offering up a taste of Germany you may never have known existed.

Hassani immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1998 and quickly found that she missed her favorite childhood recipes.  Wanting to share this culinary heritage with her new American family, she decided to release a cookbook that featured recipes she remembered fondly.  The first edition was published in 2004, but over the course of nine years, a lot has changed.  On the “Spoonfuls of Germany” website, Hassani comments that “because more ingredients used in German cooking have become more widely available in the United States” and “more regional recipes have been discovered in Germany”, it was time to take a fresh look at the original book.

Spoonfuls of Germany book coverWith 200 recipes included in the expanded “Spoonfuls of Germany”, you’ll still find familiar recipes like Sauerbraten and Spätzle, but the localized recipes such as Maultaschen (German ravioli with meat or spinach filling) and Westfälische Quarkspeise (Westphalian Trifle) make it stand out from the competition.  What is even more special are the personalized anecdotes that have been added to each recipe in order to provide insight into the food’s origins and popularity in the specific region.  Not too many cookbooks offer this type of learning experience.

If you’re tired of the same old German recipes, “Spoonfuls of Germany” might just be the cookbook you need.  If you’ve moved to the States from Germany years ago, you’ll be able to rediscover those forgotten food favorites, and for those of you that were born here and have only experienced the taste of Germany that your local restaurant has on the menu, then you’re in for some delicious surprises.

“Spoonfuls of Germany” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other local bookstores, and on Saturday, September 28, Nadia Hassani will be signing copies of the book at the Center Valley Barnes & Noble in Pennsylvania from 1-3pm.

Photos: Spoonfuls of Germany, © Ted Rosen

Article Source: GermanPulse

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ABOUT

   German Pulse is a new online magazine for the German-American community where you can  find the latest news, reviews, events, businesses, and so much more.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Cookbook, German cookbook, German cooking, German recipes, Recipe, Spoonfuls of Germany

Rum-Balls or Rumkugeln – A Christmas Season Favorite

December 9, 2012 by Cornelia 1 Comment

RäuchermännchenToday for the second Advent Sunday we have another delicious recipe waiting for you! Rumkugeln or rum-balls are a special treat that can’t be missing at Christmas time. Please enjoy the following recipe by our guest author Gabriele Utz from MyBestGermanRecipes.

rumballs-germanrecipes 
Rum Balls or Rumkugeln

Rum balls or in German “Rumkugeln” are almost mandatory for Christmas but, in my opinion, they taste awesome throughout the whole year. The rumballs are made after a traditional Austrian recipe from the good old times, when the emperor Franz Josef used to reign Germany and Austria.  In fact you don’t even have to bake them in the oven. Mix all ingredients per instructions together and you will get an unforgettable chocolate delight for Christmas and the Holidays.

Ingredients (30 pieces)
Dark dough
100 g powdered sugar
100 g almonds ground
100 g semi-sweet baking chocolate grated
1 egg white
some rum
cocoa unsweetened

Light dough
1 hard boiled egg yolk
30 g butter
1 vanilla bean
1 tbsp powdered sugar

Baking Instructions
– For the dark dough mix all ingredients thoroughly.
– For the light dough press the egg yolk through a sieve and mix it with the remaining ingredients; keep it cold.
– Make balls out of the dark dough of walnut size; the light dough should have the size of a cherry pit (so quite small).
– Place in each dark ball one light one; take the ball slightly apart and fill in the smaller one; then close it. Place them into little matching cups.
– Keep them for 30 minutes in the fridge.
– Roll the balls in the cocoa powder and place them in small paper cups.

Article Source: MyBestGermanRecipes

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ABOUT

MyBestGermanRecipes.comMyBestGermanRecipes is the creation of Gabriele Utz. Interested in cooking and baking ever since she can think of she now has turned her passion into reality, and has started an online cookbook with authentic German recipes in 2010. The website offers more than 300 original German recipes. 
website | Twitter | Facebook
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Filed Under: Culture, Life in California, LifeStyle Tagged With: Advent Sunday, Christmas, Christmas bakery, German recipes, holiday recipes, Rum ball

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