A Food Trip To Germany Without Leaving Home

Before coming to our place for her summer visit, Kathy paid a visit to her brother’s house in Napierville, IL which is about 20 minutes from our new favorite sausage maker – The Wurst Kitchen in Aurora, Il, so she and Wende, who drove up to get her, graciously agreed to bring me a small order to tide us over until we got up that way in August.

Their white brats (fine ground veal) are pre-cooked and require only a warm up and crust (for us) from the grill.  To go with them, we nuked to just warm some real deal homemade kraut from the nearby Mennonite farmers market.

A couple of things to note about this kraut are the ingredients of only salt and cabbage and that it is not swimming in liquid – the maker knows what they are doing.  They lightly canned it but it tasted more like right from the crock than cooked but you can also buy it raw.

After grilling the brats, they were topped with the kraut and sided with some Inglehoffer Stone Ground Mustard.

I considered having another side dish and glad I passed so I could fill up on this.  In addition to being huge, the brats were moist, creamy, and lightly seasoned and the kraut was the best I’ve had in a long time, like grandma made and like I ate in Germany.  All I was missing to believe I was at a Bavarian Biergarten was a good German beer to wash it all down. 

Bev ate hers a little more traditionally by adding the brat to a bun before topping with mustard and kraut plus a piece of hot pepper cheese and she also thought it was delicious.  She recently had her ancestry checked and she has a little German heritage and it may be driving her desire to have sausages (usually with peppers and onions) about once a week.  If she suddenly decides she likes beer, I’ll know the German is coming through stronger.

Several packages of the white brats will be on the list for our August stop in Aurora and we picked up six more quarts of kraut which should last us through the winter and if not we'll get even more next year.

Follow up on previous post - This just shows how food habits may follow us through life.  Three folks commented that they have never had a grilled cheese with mayo on it, while I don't believe I've ever had one without it - come to think of it most of my sandwiches include mayo, just as mom made them - Hellmann's most of my life but now Duke's.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

7/11/18 Meal Date