[Sca-cooks] Bratwurst mania [LONG]

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Cindy M. Renfrow:
>  >http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/dining/05BRAT.html?8wd
>>
>>Interesting article from the New York Times. Also has
>>some peripheral information on other sausages....
>>
>>Phlip
>
>Hubby was p.o'd last night because he couldn't access this article. The NY
>Times requires an access code or password.
>
>Cindy

Huh... I didn't need one, but it may be automatic for me at this
point; I think I must have registered with them a while back, and my
browser keeps supplying the password.

Hoping not to offend people with extreme bandwidth, here's the
article, in its annoying entirety, for reasons of attribution [I had
already e-mailed it to a friend, so it's sitting in my mailbox]:

At 7:27 PM -0400 6/5/02, troy at asan.com wrote:
>This article from NYTimes.com
>has been sent to you by troy at asan.com.
>
>
>In case you were homesick...
>
>troy at asan.com
>
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>
>The Meat That Made Sheboygan Famous
>
>June 5, 2002
>By R. W. APPLE Jr.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>SHEBOYGAN, Wis. - SUMMER is nigh. The season of backyard
>barbecues and lakeside cookouts is at hand, which in most
>parts of the country means an orgy of grilled steaks,
>hamburgers and hot dogs lasting until Labor Day and beyond.
>
>
>But not in Wisconsin, and certainly not in Sheboygan, a
>well-kept little city of 51,000 on Lake Michigan, about an
>hour's drive north of Milwaukee. This is the capital of the
>kingdom of bratwurst. A brat - the name rhymes with pot,
>not with pat - is a pork or pork-and-beef sausage, spicier
>and stubbier than a hot dog. In Sheboygan, at least, it is
>also an object of veneration, taken as seriously as a lock
>of some medieval saint's hair.
>
>"When it comes to the manufacture, preparation, serving and
>ingestion of brats, we are right," says Sheboygan Brats, or
>Come Fry with Me, a leaflet published by the local
>convention and visitors bureau. "We are in first place.
>There is no second."
>
>No self-respecting restaurant here, whether humble hole in
>the wall or soignÈ supper club, can make do without a
>proper charcoal grill, because the bratwurst catechism
>specifies that the stout little sausage must be grilled
>over charcoal, not boiled or fried or sizzled on a stove
>top griddle.
>
>No civic, charitable, religious, educational or sporting
>fund-raiser, not even in midwinter, is complete without a
>brat fry, which has nothing to do with frying and
>everything to do with grilling. They know their sausages
>here, but they sometimes have a little trouble with
>culinary terminology.
>
>A few old-fashioned butchers and markets in and near
>Sheboygan make their own brats. Most add salt, pepper and
>nutmeg to the ground meat that is stuffed into natural
>casings to form sausages; some use mace, garlic, sage or
>ginger. But the little guys have been eclipsed in volume,
>if not quality, by Johnsonville Foods, now partly owned by
>Sara Lee. The enormous Johnsonville factory, rising from
>the farmland west of here like an auto assembly plant,
>cranks out millions of brats a year and sells them
>nationwide.
>
>Once cooked, a Sheboygan brat must be served on a split
>hard roll called a semmel, which is rugged enough to hang
>together under attack from the torrents of savory juice
>released when you bite into it. The classic accompaniments
>are brown mustard, preferably coarsely ground; dill pickle
>slices, ketchup and raw onions, though some nonconformists
>opt for relish or sauerkraut.
>
>"A few people do that, I suppose," said Charles K. Miesfeld
>III, a fourth-generation bratwurst manufacturer, with the
>air of a priest discussing a wayward parishioner. "But it's
>not traditional, not the Sheboygan way." Even worse: at
>Milwaukee Brewers baseball home games at Miller Field, and
>at tailgate brat fries before Green Bay Packers football
>games at Lambeau Field, brats are often served, not on
>semmel rolls but on brat buns, which are downsized versions
>of squishy hot dog rolls.
>
>"What can you expect?" Mr. Miesfeld asked me when I brought
>this schism to his attention. "You're in Milwaukee and
>Green Bay, not Sheboygan."
>
>Since this is Wisconsin, the dairy state par excellence,
>the cut sides of the rolls are slathered with plenty of
>butter before the sausage is inserted. And since the
>German-Americans who dominate the local population are big
>eaters, two bratwursts are usually squeezed into one roll,
>side by side.
>
>"A double with the works, that's what I always have," said
>Mr. Miesfeld, 44. "A double, then you pop a cholesterol
>pill. It's a mortal sin here if you order a single."
>
>Personally, I'd hold the ketchup, if I weren't afraid the
>Wisconsin condiment cops would nab me for heresy.
>
>Bratwurst - generally a fresh sausage, neither smoked nor
>cured - originated in southern Germany, in what are now the
>l”nder or states of Bavaria and Thuringia. Each region or
>city had its own specialty, and many still do. Coburg
>bratwurst, traditionally grilled over a fire fueled by pine
>cones, were known as early as 1530. Thuringer bratwurst are
>usually made of veal but sometimes contain pork. Regensburg
>bratwurst, roughly the size of your ring finger, are still
>served at the Historical Sausage Kitchen, a smoky little
>joint, founded in 1309, which stands along the Danube near
>an ancient stone bridge.
>
>My wife, Betsey, ate a dozen or so regensburgers, cooked
>over an open beechwood charcoal fire and lined up with
>Teutonic precision on a paper plate, when we visited the
>historical kitchen some years ago. She begged for more. "I
>was cold," she later explained, piteously.
>
>The most famous German brats are probably those of
>Nuremberg. A little smaller than regensburgers - the size
>of your little finger, maybe - these are made from neck or
>shoulder of pork, seasoned with marjoram, cooked over a
>wood fire and traditionally served on a pewter plate with
>sauerkraut, asparagus or potato salad. Six make a snack,
>they say, 14 a dandy lunch.
>
>According to local legend, nurnbergers are as slim as they
>are because they were illicitly passed through the keyholes
>of taverns after closing time.
>
>My guess is that Sheboygan bratwurst are descendants of
>Nurnberg bratwurst, although they are much bigger - about
>six inches long and more than an inch in diameter.
>(Everything seems to grow when it crosses the Atlantic from
>east to west.) But this is no more than a hunch, I admit.
>
>The local convention and visitors bureau, so good on most
>wurst questions, speaks less authoritatively on the matter
>of antecedents. The Germans who settled this region in the
>early to middle 19th century, the bureau says, substituted
>pork for veal in their brat recipes because they had more
>pigs than cattle. But why was that? Cattle were already
>plentiful in the United States, and as the passage of time
>has shown, Wisconsin is fine cow country.
>
>Mr. Miesfeld has another explanation. His father and
>grandfather used a mixture of pork and veal, he said, but
>veal became too expensive in the 20th century and they went
>over to pork or pork mixed with beef.
>
>Willy Ruef, 64, a master butcher from the Swiss capital
>city, Bern, who operates a meat market in New Glarus in the
>southern part of the state, still makes his bratwurst with
>veal. True, they cost more than pork brats, but New Glarus
>continues to attract immigrants from Switzerland, and they
>and his other customers are apparently glad to pay more for
>authenticity.
>
>Usinger's, the famous Milwaukee sausage house, founded in
>1880, makes fresh, mottled-red bratwurst with coarse-ground
>pork, corn syrup, lemon juice, salt and spices. It also
>makes a precooked version of that sausage as well as
>precooked brats stuffed with pork and veal. Both are
>popular with people like tailgaters, who can't take the
>time, or don't have the facilities, to parboil their brats
>before slapping them on the grill. Parboiling in water or
>beer or even beer and onions, which is de rigueur in
>Milwaukee, reduces the risk of sausage casings bursting
>over the coals.
>
>"If that happens, you lose the juices and most of the
>flavor," said Jill Shibilski, a 15-year veteran behind the
>handsome old marble counters in Usinger's downtown
>Milwaukee shop. "And remember, never poke them with a fork,
>for the same reason. Turn them with tongs, or your
>fingers."
>
>(Usinger's made the hot dogs, or frankfurters, as the firm
>prefers to call them, for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt
>Lake City. Sausage-starved souls stranded far from
>Wisconsin can order their brats, dogs and scores of other
>delicious sausages by telephone, (800) 558-9998; fax, (414)
>291-5277; or on the Internet, www.usinger.com.)
>
>True sons of Sheboygan view parboiling as foolishness. They
>acknowledge the danger of exploding brats, certainly, but
>they insist that the way to guard against it is to cook the
>sausages slowly, for 20 minutes or more, a respectful
>distance from coals that have subsided from red to
>gray-white.
>
>Traditionalist that he is, Mr. Miesfeld vigorously espouses
>that view. But he is a canny businessman as well, and his
>Triangle Market caters to every taste, no matter how
>perverse. In addition to his classic Grand Champion
>Bratwurst, customers can choose 19 other kinds of brats,
>including all-beef, no-salt, chicken, turkey, garlic,
>garlic and onion, cheese, jalapeÒo, Cajun, chili and
>Italian. What? Italian brats? Can bratwurst pizza be far
>behind?
>
>Betsey and I got some inkling of Mr. Miesfeld's virtuosity
>as a sausagemaker at the Horse and Plow pub of the American
>Club, a handsome inn in the nearby village of Kohler. The
>grilled-sausage sampler there included a garlic brat, an
>apricot and Dijon brat, which tasted a lot better than it
>sounds, and a spicy, Slovenian-style sausage called a
>kranski, all from the House of Miesfeld, plus a mound of
>warm, vinegar-laced, bacon-dotted potato salad.
>
>A towering glass of malty, amber-hued Maibock beer, a
>seasonal specialty from the Capital Brewery in Madison, did
>for the sausages what a bottle of good, flinty Chablis does
>for a plate of oysters. Only Miller remains of the many
>megabreweries that once graced Milwaukee, but dozens of
>small outfits have sprung up all over the state, producing
>beers of many varieties.
>
>Everyone we talked to said the best semmel rolls come from
>City Bakery, and when we popped in for a visit, the young
>woman working behind the display cases, Kim Bannier, told
>us why: it has the only hearth oven in town. The rolls,
>about the size of a hamburger bun, are formed by hand,
>placed on a board dusted with cornmeal to rise, tapped with
>a stick to make the traditional crease in the top, then
>eased onto the oven's brick floor. The method, which
>produces a thin, notably crispy crust, has changed not an
>iota since 1937.
>
>By now we had a passable working knowledge of brat and bun.
>
>
>But we longed to set aside our table manners, to say
>nothing of our limited dignity, and sample the primal brat
>experience: smoky sausage and crusty semmel crumbling
>together in the mouth, condiments merging into a single
>slithery sharpness and buttery juices dribbling down the
>shirt.
>
>We got our wish at Terry's Diner, a no-frills establishment
>housed in a battered concrete-block building in a
>working-class neighborhood on Sheboygan's south side.
>Settling ourselves on a couple of stools and sipping Diet
>Cokes - an exercise in futility if I ever saw one - we
>watched the laconic grill man move the brats around an
>ancient charcoal grill that must have been there since the
>place opened in 1939.
>
>Why, I inquired, didn't he use tongs, to protect his
>fingers?
>
>"I was born and raised in Sheboygan," he answered, "and the
>only way I ever learned to cook brats is using my hands.
>You have to squeeze them. When they're soft they're not
>done. When they firm up, they are."
>
>He knows his business. With our appetites stimulated by the
>sweet, fatty smoke coming from the grill, we tore into the
>sandwiches as soon as they appeared on the counter before
>us, wrapped in parchment paper, bereft of plate. Bingo.
>Best in show.
>
>At Terry's the brats come side by side on the roll, but at
>our next stop, the Charcoal Inn North, an immaculate little
>cube of a restaurant with lace curtains, they are split and
>flattened before grilling, then served one atop the other.
>That method yielded slightly less juicy sausages, but it
>produced crunchy bits at the edges of the brats. A fair
>exchange, we thought, though we preferred the spicier
>flavor of the sausages at Terry's.
>
>Bob Lauer, owner of the Hoffbrau, a wood-paneled supper
>club decorated with lots of sporting memorabilia, had a
>trick that lent his brats (and New York strip steaks) the
>flavor of wood smoke. Disdaining charcoal briquettes
>because he thought they sometimes gave food an oily taste,
>he used only natural hickory lump charcoal from Cedar
>Grove, Wis., containing no chemicals. Though the Hoffbrau
>is no more, the knockout flavor of its brats is remembered
>by many (including the two of us).
>
>But no matter where we went, no matter whether the
>bratwurst was slightly or intensely smoky, filled with
>finely or chunkily ground meat, mild or spicy, one ratio
>remained constant: each sandwich required a minimum of six
>large paper napkins for the postprandial cleanup.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/05/dining/05BRAT.html?ex=1024319659&ei=1&en=2ff1ceabb3422d14
>
>
>
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