Foolproof Bavarian / German recipes for big crowds

Roight, Im getting ready for the holidays. This year I want to make a traditional german meal for the folks back home at christmas time. They're getting beer and eats and will like it dammit. It'll have to be

1. easy enough to feed a large family, so nothing individual like schnitzels
2. common ingredients available in the states, so no real german specialties like weisswurst or leberkase.

Does anyone have any foolproof german recipes? I'm thinking tafelspitz would be a good one for the main course?

Schweinsbraten mit Semmelknödel?
That'd be pretty straight forward, ingredients-wise.
Maybe a lovely Bayerische Creme (use frozen raspberries).
Gee jml, I thought I was the only one who does this kinda thing (yes I do have a Christmas box and do my Christmas shopping during the year)!
Tafelspitz - this looks pretty OK. Use a brisket joint I guess.

schweinsbraten is good
i cooked it for my parents once, it was quite nice
if i can make a decent job of it, then anyone can

Try Don Riina's Roast Pork Recipe.

Semmelsknödel:
10 old, slightly stale bread rolls (or about 1 lb slightly stale white bread)
500ml milk
1 small onion + a bit of butter
3 tblsp chopped parsley
3 eggs
Salt/Pepper

Chop the bread into thin slices (or grate or process) and put in a bowl. Warm the milk in a pan and pour the hot milk over the bread.
Leave to steep/soak for at least 1hr.
Chop the onion and fry in the butter until glassy. Leave to cool slightly.
Add the onions to the bread and mix in along with the parsley, salt and pepper.
Whirl the 3 eggs together and then use to bind the mixture (add the eggs a bit at a time, you want the mixture to bind but not be sloppy - add more dry breadcrumbs or milk if necessary).
Boil up a huge pan of slightly salted water and let it simmer.
Make a test Knödel with dampened hands and using a slotted spoon, slide it into the simmering water. If you haven't now got bread soup, this is good.
Use the rest of the mixture to make dumplings and add to the pan. Let the pan come up to a gentle boil and wait until the dunplings swin to the top of the water.
As soon as this happens, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and part cover the pan.
Leave to cook for about 20 mins (or longer if you need to keep them "on hold").
Drain my removing them with a slotted spoon.

Red cabbage with apples would be another great side dish (and is better on the second day so make it ahead).
Bavarian Cream
Sauerbraten
Potato dumplings

I've been told the easiest way to make great tasting potato dumplings is to use one of the package mixes for Kartoffelknödel (don't take up much room in the suitcase), but add one freshly grated potato to the mix and it's much nicer. Never tried it myself.

Bavarian Creme went down a treat last year at Christmas. Glühwein is damn easy to make.

Roast a goose. That's nice and traditional and will feed a bunch.

getting ready for the holidays??? which f-ing holiday? it's August ffs!!! AUGUST.

(and won't your family be thrown off if anything you serve has a degree of moisture to it? )

edit: and just because i'm in that kind of mood:

@showem: CREMAINS

thanks peeps - except for ms. i'd like an extra side of cremains - butterbean. yeah some of those will do quite nicely. oh and katrina, i'm hoping to steal your gluhwein gift cups idea this year

that was really just for showem's benefit jml, as she said the word creeps her out. but then again, maybe it would fit the description of your ma's T-giving turkey...

That is one of my all-time *good ideas* - just call me Martha (and chain me to the stove).
BTW did you read that hatchet job Vanity Fair did on her? spits

Thanks Butterbean, I appreciate that. It's so icky!

Also thought about Kasespatzl, that's easy to make for a crowd too. You don't need a special spätzel maker, you can do it by hand.

no didnt see the hatchet job. no one hatchets the martha. hey butterbean, leave me ma out of this. oh and your invite for turkey day is in the mail. i got you a extra big plate.

Oh they made her look bad by saying she keeps her black horses out of the sun because they go ginger and that she doesn't like them looking ginge.
Entirely reasonable I think - I mean I dye the red bits out of my hair and it isn't like you can dip horses in sunscreen is it?
Still bought the next issue - that interview with Jen Aniston is well worth a read.
Sorry, this has nothing to do with recipes (but there's a nice picture of her with a lemon drizzle cake in the issue).

Zwiebelfleisch is easy and great for large crowds.
Thin slice pork tenderloins (or cheaper cut).
Packet onion soup mix and extra onions for added flavor.
Cream
Bake at 350°F for 50mins-ish (when the meat pulls apart easily).

Sides could be as varied as Germany-fried green beans with speck, spätzle, noodles, noodle salad, cucumber and potato salad, tomato and mozzarella salad, und und und...

Oy and someone posted this Himmel und Erde schnellsomething recipe on another thread. Im linking it here as it looks fairly simple and good too.

I'm still troubled by which holiday you're talking about. And that it's ONLY AUGUST especially when it's hard enough on days like today to tell myself summer is not over...

That's IT. I'm calling your mom. And where is that friggin slap upside the head button...

I was thinking about printing off this PDF for this year.
Seriously.

@Katrina. Thats seriously good. and scary.

@BB...Screw that look at this weather. you're telling me you wouldn't eat a nice pot roast for dinner tonite. The real secret is i have to PRACTISE these recipes before um bestowing my culinary skills upon kin. though food poisoning *is* a gift that keeps giving...hmmm...a nice meal and kilos lost, who would remember the part inbetween anyway?

Anyhoo, im talking christmas. You know that time when all the good boys and girls, ie not you or I, get gifts from the jolly fat man in the red polyester suit? I calculate the time I got between now and christmas and my inherent cooking skills...lets just say I dont even know what the hell marjoram is...and i'm about 3 months behind.

Maybe i should just start another thread called your favourite german food in a tin or box...non-perishable and allowable into the states naturally...

oh good lord. I thought for sure we were actually talking about recipes that mr. jml would end up making, not you. yikes. glad I live on this side of town. you mad at your peeps back home or what?

It's gotta be roast pork with spud dumplings. I'd go for some stereotypical sauerkraut too. You can get away with using the dumpling mix you can get here, and adding a grated potato to it as suggested. It works out OK (remember to put the little krouton of bread in the middle of the dumplings though, or you are commiting a sin)

Screw tradition a bit, and make a decent alsace style sauerkrout - basically fry up some massive pieces of smoked bacon to release the fat, and toss some sliced onions into it. Fry off the onions, then add a goooood splash of white wine, scrape all the burnt bits up while the wine is bubbling, then chuck in a load of sauerkraut. Thats your base.
Now you can get a bit more inventive with the rest of the ingredients..
Basically, chuck in tons of random pork products; no novelty variety meats like heart and kidneys here, but stuff like some roasted pork ribs, pieces of roast pork belly, pork sausages..you get the picture. Porky stuff. When all your chosen bits of ace pigginess are in the cabbage base, cover and simmer for 30 minutes or so; check it does not get too dry, and add water if needed.

To complete the utter overdose on pig, roast off some pork, making sure you get the skin really great and crispy (pretty much just dry the skin well, score it with a sharp knife, and rub some salt in before cooking. Piss easy).
Serve the sauerkrout with all its porky goodieswith slices of the roast pork and crispy cracking fanned on top. Couple of potato dumplings on the side, and maybe some apple sauce, and you are good to go.
Oh, apple sauce is just cored peeled and chopped apples put in a covered pan with maybe a splash of water, and cooked real slow until soft. Then you can push it through a sieve to make a smooth puree, or leave it chunky. Add some sugar if you really must, but I wouldn't.

Its so easy to do, because the sauerkraut can keep warm (or even be cooked off in advance), the pork can sit and rest for 30 minutes after roasting, which gives you time to chuck the dumplings in water.
Basically each part of the dish is quite forgiving in that it will sit about quite happily for a while waiting, so you don't have to have great timing of everything being ready at the same point.

thanks your ginger godliness. just a question, when people say umm "sauerkraut" do they mean "cabbage"

OMG whatever you do DO NOT buy the canned stuff they have back home. The gang got me some for my going away party back home...it sat on the table (and man it stank)...no one would even go or sit near it.

And can I just say kudos to you for all your planning and your willingness to take a bit of Germany home for the holidays

They mean Liberty Cabbage...

But anyway, yeah, just take some home with you.

Nah, Im gonna make most of it, excepting the knodel bit from scratch I think. Though am going to start another thread on recommend german food from a tin/box just in case my dinner goes pear shaped. (Oy i love that saying). Always have an escape route says me.

Sauerkrout from scratch?!? Jeez, thats brave.

i thought sauerkraut - liberty cabbage. is that not a type of cabbage one can get in the store, like say I dunno red or green cabbage? ah bastards nevermind probably best if I bring some cans of stuff marked sauerkraut.

Sauerkraut is often thought to be pickled cabbage, but actually its not, its fermented cabbage. A bit like Kim Chi, but without the chilli. Pain in the ass to make, just buy it in.

Just buy canned Sauerkraut - you get it in every supermarket and it really tastes all right (you can add some dried juniper berries and laurel leaves when you warm it).

Red or green cabbage are the fresh heads of cabbage like this:

[img]http://www.laughingstockfarm.com/images/July%2003/Cabbage%20Mix%20Web.JPG[/img]

"liberty cabbage" means sauerkraut like this:

[img]http://www.foodsubs.com/Photos/sauerkraut.jpg[/img]

"Making sauerkraut from scratch" can either mean doing like... dammit someone on the forum in the last year actually went to a festival in his neighborhood where everyone made sauerkraut and they all grated the cabbage on mandolines and stuff, and I can't find it now. I think jml's "scratch" means taking it out of the can and doctoring it up with the various pork products, bay leaves, and juniper berries and white wine re the don's instructions. MMMMM good.

Thanks Gen. I didnt realise how that making sauerkraut from scratch was so difficult. Though Ben Panter (the guy from Gen's story above) says its easy peasy. I think I'm fairly sorted now, except for the dessert bit. I might try Katrina's suggestion for the mmm bayerisches cream...or I might just bring chocolates

A little snack if you are caught out by unexpected things..such as people still hungry, suprise visitors...could be a nice serving of obazda and few brezels. A selection of beers and it'll go down a treat.

Or some afternoon snacks like apfelstrudel or a nice traditional kuchen.

Well, its not exactly difficult. Just involves salting and pressing a load of cabbage. But its time consuming, cannot realistically be done on a small scale, and is basically crazy when you can buy better stuff, ready made. Think about puff pastry. Ever make it from scratch? Noooo! Why? Because its a shit load of work, that normally end up with worse results than you get from pre-made.

Personally, if I was to piss about fermenting some cabbage, I'd make Kim Chi instead of sauerkrout. Much nicer.

Silly question but is S.Kraut actually nutritious?

If so, in what way?

Can't be carbs. And any vits/mins would be boiled/treated away?

Try nutritiondata.com.


Sauerkraut is one of those foods that was invented to keep people alive over winter. You couldn't get much in the way of vegetables so along with the root veg (parsnips, turnips, potatoes after 1492), so you preserved what you could get in summer. You'll see it's low in calories but high in C and minerals; it stopped Germans getting scurvy in Winter.

It's not boiled, just fermented. You take a mettric buttload of cabbage, shred it, and pack it in layers into a wooden barrel, salting each layer well. You seal the barrel and shove it in the cellar and if you did right and salted well enough you'll have yummy sauerkraut a few months later. If you did it wrong you'll have inediby salty stuff or a big barrel of mold and slime.

woof.

Fermented stuff is really good for an upset stomach apparently.But it can also give you wicked wind.
Low in cals and fat-free though, hasn't it got loads of Vit C too?

Kim Chi has more, because red chilli contains a belt load of Vitamin C.
(Sorry, I carry an odd obsession for kimchi at the moment)

Not just zee Germans. Captain Cook took it for his sailors too.

Okay I'm going to go buy some canned stuff, what brand should I look for?

Thanks peoples

Hengstenberg Mildessa is the ONLY choice
http://www.hengstenberg.de

Thanks Marty. I can even get that brand in the US.

FYI to US Americanos. To locate a german food store near you or online with deliveries in the US, visit German Foods.Org One of those retailers even ships schweinshaxe for you to spit roast in your own home. I think santa wouldnt mind exchanging the milk and cookies for a bit of meat and bier this year