German · Main
Thüringer Rostbratwurst
- Advanced
- 75 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, char used as punctuation, on a slow, honest burn.
Ingredients
- 800 g pork shoulder, in 3 cm cubes
- 400 g pork belly, rind off, in 3 cm cubes
- 200 g veal shoulder, in 3 cm cubes
- 25 g fine salt, 1.8 percent of the 1.4 kg of meat
- 6 g dried marjoram, rubbed between the palms
- 4 g ground caraway
- 4 g ground white pepper
- 1 g grated nutmeg
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 120 ml iced water
- 3 m hog casing, 26 mm to 28 mm, soaked and flushed
Equipment
Thermometer · Grill · Sheet pan · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Spread the diced meat on a tray and freeze it 30 minutes, until the edges are stiff and the fat is hard to the fingernail. The grinder plate, blade and bowl go in with it. 30 min
- Grind everything through a 4.5 mm plate into the chilled bowl, then add the salt, marjoram, caraway, white pepper, nutmeg, garlic and iced water and work it for 3 minutes, until the mass turns sticky and a handful clings to an upturned palm. 3 min
- Fry a small patty, taste it for salt and marjoram, and correct the whole batch before a single link is stuffed.
- Stuff the casing without stretching it, twist into 20 cm lengths, prick any air pockets, and rest the sausages uncovered in the fridge overnight so the salt completes the bind and the surface dries.
- Grill over medium coals for 12 minutes to 15 minutes, turning often, to an internal 71C (160F). The skin should blister and stay whole; a split link has been cooked too fast. 12 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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