Wisconsin · Main
Wisconsin Bratwurst in Beer
- Intermediate
- 60 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with char used as punctuation, richness that coats and comforts, with a lingering ferment tang.
Ingredients
- 8 fresh bratwurst
- 4 bottles lager
- 2 onions, sliced
- 2 tbsp butter
- 1 tsp caraway
- 8 hard rolls
- Stone-ground mustard and sauerkraut
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · mustard · alcohol
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
- Simmer the brats gently in the beer with the sliced onions, butter, and caraway 20 min: do not boil, which splits the casings. 20 min
- Lift the brats out and grill them over medium coals until browned and blistered, 10 min, turning. 10 min
- Keep the beer and onions simmering to reduce into a soft, sweet topping.
- Set each brat in a roll.
- Top with the beer onions, mustard, and kraut.
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
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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