Happy Mutants food and drink topic (Part 2)

[zfirphdn]

gift link:

The 33 new foods at the 2024 Minnesota State Fair include deep-fried ranch...

[danimagoo]

The brats I have been eating were not smoked or otherwise cured. They were raw.

[FloridaManJefe]

oops!
looks like i owe @BakerB a frosty beverage of their choice!
(re: beer boiled brats)

[BakerB]

Food-on-a-stick! One of best reasons to visit any state fair.

[sqlrob]

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[Doctor_Faustus]

@DukeTrout

What might be more common here than in Germany is smoked bratwurst

We do smoked bratwurst in Franconia as well, but I suspect it’s a different thing. I’m picking up from context that you are talking about a (lightly) smoked bratwurst that is then grilled.

Franconian smoked bratwurst (geräucherte Bratwurst) is cold smoked until preserved and eaten cold (usually with bread and mustard) as a hiking snack or as part of a charcuterie dinner. The consistency can vary from soft to hard, depending on the customer’s preference.

[DukeTrout]

@Doctor_Faustus

I’m picking up from context that you are talking about a (lightly) smoked bratwurst that is then grilled.

Precisely! It’s fully cooked, but not smoked until dried.

[Doctor_Faustus]

Thanks. I’ll give it a try and report back

[chgoliz]

@MerelyGifted

They couldn’t afford to waste anything, so wound up creating many foods which a typical Yankistani would never fancy. Since he’d been a V smol child at the time, he’d grown up on the stuff, and still liked all of it.

Grew up loving my grandpa’s venison head cheese, so I totally get where he’s coming from.

[Doctor_Faustus]

Reporting back. So I boiled two bratwürste for c. 5min (they registered 70°C on the thermometer after that time, so I pulled them out so as not to overly dry them out) and then pan fried them. As a control I made two in the way I am used to (straight pan frying)

Here you can see the results. As you can see, three of the four sausages look very similar, while the one on the front right looks a bit different (it was actually clearer to see IRL). The two on the back roll are fried from raw, the back one on the front roll was parboiled, but not pricked during the boiling process. The one that looks different was parboiled for the same time, but pricked. It shrank considerably and didn’t brown as well. I guess that makes sense, since it had less fat when it entered the pan.

When it comes to taste, the thing I feared would happen, didn’t: I was afraid the parboiled ones would be dry, but that wasn’t the case. I could not detect any difference in juiciness or graininess. I could discern a difference in taste, however. The bratwürste fried from raw were saltier and tasted meatier, more like I am used to from home. The parboiled ones tasted less rounded. There was no difference in taste between the pricked and unpricked parboiled sausage.

That said, the difference was subtle and I could not swear I would be able to pick it out in a blind test, so I see no reason not to parboil if you’re so inclined, or worried about rawness. I will also say that I have a lot of experience frying raw bratwürste. I have experienced other people under and over frying them. In that case, the parboiled ones would have easily won.

PS: don’t worry. Mustard was added after the photo was taken

[danimagoo]

Was there any difference in the texture of the casing?

[Doctor_Faustus]

Not that I could discern, no

[Amanitiac]

Yes but compare that to the impact of raising a cow or pig, slaughtering it, then heating it up and slathering it with sauce?

One of my personal “todos” is to learn to make more of the dishes I typically order out for… Thai curry, palak paneer, etc… and eat less meat and more tofu.

i suspect a lot of the “le epic bacon narwal” reddit athiest foodie types would be more willing to consider vegetarianism if they were introduced to things like mapo tofu

Mapo tofu

[Grey_Devil]

@Amanitiac

One of my personal “todos” is to learn to make more of the dishes I typically order out for

I don’t do this a whole lot but i have replicated some dishes that were really pricey that i knew i could remake at home easily. SO is vegan so eating out ends up being a lesson in being overcharged for simple things more often than not, my best success was remaking a vegan grilled cheese kimchi sandwhich. I would like to attempt to make some samosas and a vegan palak paneer

[Amanitiac]

@Grey_Devil

SO is vegan so eating out ends up being a lesson in being overcharged for simple things

you can get mapo mix at most asian marts apparently, and once it’s meatless it’s also vegan iirc

even out to eat it’s often like 9.99 at the sichuan places ive been

[Miros]

I’ve always wanted to make Mapu Tofu for myself! Got a recipe you would suggest?

[Amanitiac]

@Miros

I’ve always wanted to make Mapu Tofu for myself! Got a recipe you would suggest?

I didn’t have the time to try it out, just noticed the mix in the store – but they have EN instructions on the packets at asian marts.

[TornPaperNapkin]

Check out Chinese Cooking Demystified on youtube.

They do a pretty good job of really getting into home cooking Chinese style and often do a good job of suggesting western alternatives for the odd hard-to-find fresh veg. Their curry recipe goes into some depth.

[OhHai]

I’m sorry your brats turned out tough in the air fryer! The ones I made were precooked, so I just did about 5 minutes at 400 F.

[Wayward]

Not pretty, not fancy, just a bunch of small plums heading toward overripe baked into an easy sponge cake.