Lady to the butcher: I am looking for something different and special?
Butcher: How about a nice smoked beef tongue?
Lady: I never would eat anything out of a cow’s mouth. Give me a dozen eggs, please.
A great and cost controlled way to spend an evening with friends would be to have a “Pizza Party” with your Raclette.
We all know what we like on our pizza and looking at the ingredients in what they now call “Artisan Pizza” we can get an idea of what other toppings we can use. From anchovies to ham, from pre-fried Italian sausage to loose hamburger, pineapple to spinach or just the basic pepperoni and cheese, also mushrooms, onions, olives and maybe even sour cherries, the ingredients you want to include is only limited by your imagination and what you and your guests are willing to try.
A 2 ½ minute YouTube video of a Swiss Raclette Pizza Party
With the Raclette you and your friends can experiment with taste combinations to your heart’s desire and as you only make a small portion at a time, if a particular set up does not taste the way you imagined, no big deal, just create a different one.
So, with a nice spread of ingredients your guests are not limited to what you ordered from the pizza joint, they create their own and thus are individual “Pizza Artisans”. Wow, you can even call this an “Artisan Pizza Party”, nobody else will be able to trump that!
As the “dough” we use a thinly sliced French baguette or flat bread and if you want just the toppings you can omit bread all together.
Many of the commercial pepperoni or pizza sausages are too high in fat content for our taste, so we prefer a lean Hard Salami from a good source. To “pepperoni-ize” it you can always add some cayenne pepper for heat and paprika for color.
“We” start with a slice of salami and/or ham on the grill top. Once grilled a bit, transfer to the raclette pan, spoon on some spaghetti or pizza sauce, add all other toppings you feel like and top it with your choice of cheese; mozzarella for the timid to Asiago and may be even Limburger (lol) for the adventuresome (The smell of a good ripe Limburger is not for the fainthearted and might chase your guests away early but is mentioned as an ingredient to show the wide variety of cheeses you could use).
Set the pan under the broiler, place your “dough” part on the grill to toast, sit back and have a drink till your concoction or let’s call it “Artisan Creation” is done. If you are really hungry, you could also work on your follow up “culinary experience” by getting your next pan ready.
When the cheese is melted to your desire, move the bread to your plate and slide the contents of the pan onto it, it is time to eat. Enjoy!
As everybody creates their own, they get exactly what they want. If they dare to try unusual combinations and like them, they might even change their choice of toppings on their future pizza orders.
We consider this a fun way to experience something common in a brand new way.
A few years ago (it might actually be quite a few) having company over on Saturday night for fondues was done quite often at our house. The usual were two fondues, sometimes even three, set up. One was a terrific cheese fondue made with Swiss Cheese, Gruyere, White Wine and Kirsch Brandy, the other one strictly hot oil and if my wife added a third it was a decadent chocolate fondue for desert. We really used to enjoy these evenings with food and friends engaging in good conversations in front of the fireplace.
Why did we stop these events? We have no idea, but at one point it seemed, it was not “fashionable” anymore!
Raclette, our first try
Along comes the Raclette.
We “racletted” again last night, our second try, with close friends as our “guinea pigs”. During a discussion at the end of the evening all four of us concluded that it was a great and also fun experience.
Let’s first talk about the limitations of a fondue. The traditional cheese fondue, one great taste experience as a hot dip for French bread. Oil fondue: Unseasoned meat pieces and any solid vegetable fried out in vegetable oil and served with dipping sauces. By the way, back then, when we did these fondues we were never told that fat was bad for us and if, we probably wouldn’t have cared about it anyways, those were the days!
Raclette: Anything you grill on top can be seasoned to your liking. The variety of vegetables and seasonings you can use is extensive. The assortment of cheeses which are good for melting is limited to the taste of you and your guests.
So to sum it up:
Raclette:
- The variety of food choices for a Raclette evening is a lot greater
- With that your taste experience increases by multiples
- Healthier cooking without oil, of course the fat intake from the cheese might counteract this if you are not careful
- You eat for two hours not realizing how fast the time goes by
- Any complains about seasoning is quickly taken care of, as you season your own stuff and ergo it is your own problem
- As you use the little pans for your individual servings you create, you can assemble any combination of the different ingredients at the table
Now, to get the most out of this you have to be willing to experiment and have a little bit of imagination, if you lack the first, just try the potatoes and fry out a piece of meat, if you lack the second, look around and copy from the other people at the table, just omit the things you refuse to eat or try.
The part of splurging on melted cheeses is definitely not part of a diet for those of us on a health kick. On the other hand, as you can include all kinds of veggies and also potatoes you are able to even accommodate a vegetarian at your table without cooking separate meals.
Overall we can see why this type of entertaining friends became popular in Europe and might even catch on over here.
Our rating:
Delicious, Fun, Entertaining, Gemütlich, Creative and Sociable, if using a star rating we give it 5 stars out of 5
With the passing of another Christmas Holiday we were looking forward to a relaxed evening with a few good friends at our house on New Year’s Eve. As we usually include some kind of meal we again had to make the decision of what to serve.
From friends and family in Germany we have heard for awhile about the good times they had “doing” Raclette evenings, which seems to have quite a following over there. To make a long story short, it did not happen on New Year’s Eve, as we could not find the appliance you need for it in any of the stores we visited here in the Detroit area, as a matter of fact, a couple of the stores showed an inventory on their website and once we got there nobody knew what we were talking about. So we had to order a unit online and it did arrive after the New Year. Just a short mention, we ended up serving Weinbrand Steak that night, which was a great success as everybody seemed to enjoy it.
So our initial “Raclette evening” happened with our kids a week later and all of us loved it.
First a little history: Our research shows, that already back in the Middle Ages in the German speaking region of Switzerland, cow herders high up in the Alps placed the “Bratkäse” (frying cheese) next to the fire to melt. Once melted they scraped it onto potatoes as a very nutritious meal.
There is a 5 minute video about an outdoor Raclette party in the Swiss Alps on youtube which gives you an idea of how they still do it. “Swiss raclette on fire”
To give the at home version a try we bought the West Bend 6130 for under $50 and to have the real cheese taste found sliced Raclette cheese at Trader Joe’s.
The Raclette unit is basically a table top grill and broiler combination, as you can see in the picture, a heating coil is placed a couple of inches above the base.
Small cooking pans are placed below this to melt the cheese.
This is covered with a grill top or a warming stone.
Besides the broiling pans you also get a scraper to transfer your melted cheese onto the rest of your meal selection.
Our unit worked fine even with the metal of the grill top being kind of thin.
For the first time we tried all kinds of food from beef to pork, from chicken breast to shrimp, we added salami and smoked luncheon meat ham.
As for the cheeses: We served, besides French Raclette cheese, Muenster, Brie and Jarlsberg Swiss, we also included shredded mozzarella, hot pepper and a Mexican blend. All of them worked fine.
Naturally we tried the traditional recipe of potatoes with pearl onions and small pickles and here we used the Raclette cheese to experience the original taste. We also tried pre-steamed carrots and even Brussels sprouts, raw and fried mushrooms and did the same with onions. Even peas were excellent with cheese melted over them.
Thinly sliced French bread, toasted on the grill with salami, onions, mushrooms, pizza sauce and mozzarella broiled in the pan underneath and transferred to the toast is worth a definite mention.
We ate for a couple hours with much interaction at the table as everything had to be passed back and forth. Experimenting with different combinations, there was never a dull moment with remarks like “Man, try this” or “I shouldn’t have added this”, which shows that most of the table talk centered on our “culinary experience”.
For the spices and other seasonings use your imagination and also add some geared to the individual preferences of your guests.
As this does not require your food to be deep fried like in a fondue and you actually can control the amount of cheese consumed, you can be as diet conscious as you want to be. We also noticed that because of the time required to prepare and cook our dishes the total amounts of food we used was less then usual.
Merchandise and accessories for the Raclette experience can be found on
Amazon under the link here.
Picture of Bratwurst Coil will be replaced when we make Potato Sausage again.
I promised a good friend of mine the recipe of the Swedish Potatis Korv or Swedish Potato Sausage we made in our store.
This was adapted from an original recipe of one of our Swedish customers.
We produced this for a local Swedish club for the Holidays and special occasions. As the original recipe was more or less just a list of ingredients, describing the consistency of the finished product and the quantities were in the handful of this and a pinch of that category, it took us a few tries of making samples to perfect it to the clubs taste and quality specifications.
The finished result actually drew a few customers annually all the way from copper country in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, buying it for their neighbors and friends up there, stating that this is far better then the local sausage they could get up north. By the way our store was in Troy, Michigan over 500 miles away from them.
When we asked our Swedish customers what they served with it, the common answer was potatoes.
For the holidays we made this sausage in hundred pounds multiples.
The recipe with an ingredients calculator is posted on our Inge’s Kitchen recipe site in the Lunch Meats and Sausage section.
Click here for the recipe.
Over the years we catered many Bavarian themed parties and German picnics and learned a few shortcuts which makes it easier.
Picture courtesy of Geier's Sausage Kitchen
The Wurstfest:
Your friends and family come over for a picnic. The easiest homemade menu would be:
- different types of “Wurst” such as Bratwurst, Weisswurst and Knockwurst
- Potato Salad
- Pasta Salad
- Sauerkraut, see recipe at ingeskitchen.com
- Hard Rolls or other Buns
- Condiments including mustard and ketchup
- and a variety of drinks
The 3 basic sausage categories are fresh (raw), precooked or smoked, within these the selection is getting bigger and bigger.
Geier's Nuremberger Bratwurst, Picture courtesy of Geier's Sausage Kitchen
Fresh Sausage:
The assortment of fresh sausage included your basic Bratwurst, Country style, Italian and Polish sausage, along came the Hungarian style and together with this all the other ethnic sausages. Nowadays it goes with the whim of the sausage maker when adding jalapenos, cherries, sun dried tomatoes, cheeses, wine, beer or any other edible items they can think of, which we will buy and are willing to eat. Also the heat content within the seasonings changed from the then hot sausages which in these days would be considered mild by many who are accustomed to the heat levels of Ghost Chili Powder or whatever the newest, hottest chili is.
Picture courtesy of Geier's Sausage Kitchen
Precooked Sausage:
The most famous in this category would be Munich’s own Weisswurst. With a more open market through the Internet many of the previously only sold fresh sausages are nowadays precooked to extend their shelf life making it possible to transport them over greater distances and extending the availability to all of us.
Smoked Sausages:
We will start here with the ever famous Hot Dog with aliases like Frankfurter, Wiener or even Tube Steak and continue on to the Knockwurst and Smoked Polish. These sausages are usually also precooked, besides being smoked. Again we can add the same statement as with the fresh sausages, that the ingredients nowadays are only limited by the imagination of the sausage maker.
How much to buy?
For normal eaters we figure 1 to 2 bun size sausages for each lady and 2 to 3 for each gentleman, so do the math and add a few extras.
The day of the party preheat all the sausages. For this you would need a meat thermometer and a large pot or two. Precook all your fresh sausages in water first until they reach 160°F inside temperature, ergo the thermometer.
Do not heat the water above 170°F!
Do not bring the water to a boil as your sausages will burst wide open!
Make sure the sausages are covered with water during the cooking process. Preheat all your other precooked sausages. If you heated them in separate pots combine everything into one large pot and keep them hot in water.
Light up your grill at the appropriate time and set the pot with the sausages next to it. As they only take a minute to brown on the hot BBQ you can custom serve them to your guests and even have the late comers throw on their own. The beauty of this is that if you have any sausages left over in the pot you can cool them down to use them later, as they are just “precooked” they are just like the precooked product you buy in the store. No waste!
By preheating your Wurst you make sure all product is heated to a safe level, be able to serve a large crowd in a short period of time (at our church picnic over hundred people are served in less then 45 minutes) which gives you more time to socialize with your guests and no dried up, half burned left overs.
As a little variety, a friend of ours slices some onions and bell peppers adds beer and heats them in a washed out coffee can right on top of the BBQ. Once the sausages are brown he immerses them into the beer for a short period of time and returns them to the BBQ to dry. If you are nice to him he even shares some of the cooked “veggies” with you.
For our salad recipes you can visit ingeskitchen.com
Rouladen with Spaetzle and Red Cabbage
Beef Rouladen are a Sunday dinner and also available in many restaurants in Germany. Comparing recipes from around Germany we noticed, that different areas use different fillings.
Rouladen actually would describe any thinly sliced meats which are filled and rolled. We are also familiar with the roll ups using veal or even had them with a smoked sausage wrapped up in them.
To eliminate debates about the right or wrong way of doing these we published the recipe commonly used in then northern region of Bavaria. Our site ingeskitchen.com lists the recipe under “Bavarian Beef Rouladen” . We also included a link there to a 4 page step by step storyboard with pictures on how to make them.
Usually served with Dumplings or Spaetzle and Red Cabbage.
Boneless pork sirloins are for sale in many stores. See if you can negotiate with your favorite “meatman” as they should be a little cheaper if bought by the whole bag (about 4 pieces) than cut up in the counter.
This cut is together with the Beef Sirloin Tip one of the most versatile pieces of meat for us utilized in our cooking and even used in our homemade Luncheon meats and sausages.
The diversity of cuts from this piece of meat ranges from roast to cutlets to stew. We include a link to our youtube video on how to cut it up.
Roasts: A basic recipe can be seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic and roast on the BBQ or follow the link to our pork roast recipes. Cutting the roast open and stuffing it with bread or meat filling, ham and cheese or even spinach and cheese are other delicious alternatives. Most of what you can do with the more expensive boneless pork loin is possible to do with this cut of meat. We will post more recipes on ingeskitchen.com in the future.
Cutlets: Are great for any kind of Schnitzel (from Plain Pork to Gypsy to Hunter or Rahm-schnitzel) even just seasoned on the grill or Foreman is an excellent quick meal. Butterfly for a cheaper to veal alternative of making Cordon Bleus or stuff and roll with whatever your taste-buds desire.
Stew: We are talking the piece being cut into about 1 inch pieces. These can be braised in stews or Goulash, stick them on a skewer, bread and bake them for the old fashioned City Chicken, Pork Kebobs with Bacon and Onion on the BBQ is another one of our favorites, or even cut them into strips and fry with onions and mushrooms complimented by a Curry-Ketchup for an ultra quick meal. (The ingredients for our favorite Curry-Ketchup Sauce can be found at our Currywurst recipe, just omit the oil and bologna and stir it together not heated!)
Suelze
In Bavaria a very common luncheon meat is what we would call here Souse or Head cheese. The name alone, with the added looks of it in the Deli counter, will turn off many of us who were not introduced to it in our youth.
But let’s point out one little fact, the meat in it is very coarse and usually embedded in gelatin. There is no way to hide anything in it, you see skins, which they use to produce the natural gelatin, this part is the same ingredient as the wide spread snack of fried pork rinds, besides that you will usually see meat in it, now let us grind this meat extra fine and call it bologna, which most of us eat. Do you see where I am going with this.
Now let me introduce this with a little twist to our quality control standards. Even when we had our store I was not allowed, by my wife’s orders, to use skins or any fat whatsoever. This brought about the Suelze recipe we published in Inge’s Kitchen, we also included a step by step storyboard on the website.
Want to have your first “Sausage Maker” experience? Follow the link to our Suelze and the storyboard. We included a 2 pound recipe and for the next time a 10 pound recipe as we are confident, that all your family, friends and neighbors will be standing in line for more once they had a taste of it.
We could not find our traditional Christmas Day dinner, a goose, this year, but as we also love duck we compromised on buying two of them instead, with the label stating “enhanced with up to 12% solution of water and sodium phosphate”:
Enhance: Merriam-Webster defines enhanced as: heighten, increase; especially : to increase or improve in value, quality, desirability, or attractiveness <enhanced the room with crown molding> with the example: You can enhance the flavor of the dish by using fresh herb.
“Enhanced with” is nowadays found on many packages when buying meats. We also find “seasoned with” or just the basic “contains up to” and right behind there is not an exotic spice statement, but you will usually find the words “solution of” or any other derivative of the word “water”. The USDA excuses this that with modern breeding methods the meat offered to us is a lot leaner and to quote from the www.fsis.usda.gov website:
Hotline callers sometimes comment that today’s beef contains more water and also doesn’t taste the same as in the past. One reason for this is that today’s animals are bred to be leaner. Meat from these animals is naturally leaner and contains more water. The fat in meat contributes to flavor, so a leaner cut will taste different than a fattier cut. Some of these leaner cuts are enhanced with a flavor solution.
What does this “leaner” mean? I was taught that meat consists mainly of protein, fat, water and 1% ashes (the left over when you not only burn your meal, but actually cremate it, lol). If you notice I said mainly, so we will not account for the natural salts, minerals and so on in the same piece of meat.
As the protein content in meat is in the 20 – 30% range, depending on the type of the meat (from beef to chicken to venison) I selected as an example a very lean piece of meat, a chicken breast with about 23.5% protein and 1.7% fat, totaling (including the 1% ashes mentioned above) a little over 27%. This leaves almost 73% natural moisture/water content.
Now we enhance it. First let’s mix up some water with sodium phosphates (that is what we took out of the laundry detergents in the latter part of the last century as it caused havoc in our lakes and rivers, so now we add it to our food for the main purpose to bind more water in it) and inject or “marinate” the meat.
If you read the label, in the case of our duck, up to 12% water was added, the corned beef label I looked at stated a 25% solution, in pork loins 8 – 10% is very common. It started years ago with the “water added” statement on hams, now they call it broth, solution, seasoned with, marinated or any other term they can come up with, in the end it goes back to us buying expensive water.
Hey, we got so used to paying a high price for filtered city water in a bottle already, so why not pay for extra water in the meat.
Quick math question: If you have a lean piece of beef brisket which has over 71% natural water content (as per USDA) and you add a 25% water solution to make corned beef, what do you actually end up with?
Looking at pre-packaged chicken in the supermarkets you will also see the solution added statement on many of them.
They have to label the product if they add water!
The crowning statement here is besides calling it “enhanced“ they actually call it “value-added“
Let me just add that in my observations the smaller independent owned meat markets seem to offer natural, un-pumped meats more often than the big chain stores.
If you want to see what the USDA writes about water in meats follow this link to their site.