New Recipe: German-Style Bratwurst

One of the dishes that we'll be serving at our wedding is bratwurst cooked in beer, and our caterer has requested that we provide them with the recipe to ensure that they cook it exactly to our specifications. So last night when we had a friend over for dinner, Torsten took the opportunity to make the dish and create the recipe. It's so easy that it hardly qualifies as a recipe. Also, bratwurst is definitely NOT Weight Watchers-friendly. I don't even want to know how many points are in one of those little sausages.

Torsten made a side dish of mashed potatoes and sauerkraut, which I don't think we'll be serving at the wedding, but it was definitely yummy!

German-Style Bratwurst with Sauerkraut

Ingredients

• 8 bratwurst links (or really, however many you want) [We get ours at Whole Foods, and it isn't even that expensive]
  
• 1 bottle of beer (pale ale works best)
• 4 potatoes
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 cups sauerkraut (again, this is totally approximate)
• 1 baguette
  

Instructions

1. Boil water and add the potatoes. Cook them for 20 minutes or until soft.
2. In the meantime, pour most of the bottle of beer into a frying pan and place over medium-high heat.
3. Make three incisions on both sides of each sausage. Add them to the pan once the beer is hot. Cook for 20 minutes, turning them occasionally so that they cook evenly.
   
4. While the sausage is cooking, add the small remaining amount of beer to a second frying pan and place over medium-high heat.
5. When the beer is warm, add the sauerkraut and saute for a few minutes until heated through.
6. Once the potatoes are done, add the cream and mash them in a bowl. [We used a plastic potato masher for this.]
7. To serve, place a sausage inside a piece of baguette and put on a plate with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. Traditional Germans will mix the potatoes and sauerkraut together as they eat, but this is up to you. Many people also like to eat their bratwurst with ketchup or mustard.

The verdict: This was not healthy, but totally delicious. It's very simple to make, so much so that writing a recipe for it almost seems silly. The idea is just to cook the sausage in beer until it's done. It's a very drippy, informal thing to eat, and lots of fun, too. Plus it makes you feel authentically ethnic, because the recipe is coming straight from my resident German. We will definitely be making this one again, but not too often because it doesn't really fit in with my whole healthy living plan.