France and the Alps · Volume 12, Choucroute, Bière de Garde and the Double Border
Choucroute Garnie
Alsace
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- 10 sources cited
Before 1870, choucroute is described in the sourcing behind this chapter as a confidential regional specialty, in places looked down on as poor people's food. Alsatians who fled Prussian annexation after 1871 carried it to Paris, where it began appearing in the brasseries around the Gare de l'Est, associated with the hoped-for return of the lost territory. This specific detail rests on a single source and is presented as well-attested but not fully corroborated.
As tradition built it
Serves 6. Fermentation 3 to 4 weeks, then about 2 hours to cook.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg choucroute crue, raw fermented cabbage (see the ferment bench below to make your own)
- 60 g goose fat or lard
- 1 onion, sliced
- 2 garlic cloves
- 8 juniper berries
- 1 tsp caraway seed
- 1 bay leaf
- 300 ml dry Alsace Riesling
- about 2 kg in total, mixed assorted smoked and fresh pork: smoked bacon, smoked pork knuckle, Strasbourg-style sausages, salt pork
Method
- Rinse the choucroute briefly if it tastes very sharp, then squeeze out excess liquid.
- Melt the fat in a heavy pot, soften the onion and garlic.
- Add the choucroute, juniper, caraway and bay, and the wine.
- Bury the smoked meats in the cabbage, leaving the sausages for the final 20 minutes.
- Cover and cook gently, around 1.5 to 2 hours, until the cabbage is tender but not collapsed and the meats are cooked through.
- Add the sausages for the last 20 minutes.
- Serve piled high with the meats on top, with boiled potatoes and mustard.
What a modern chef changes
A live ferment made properly, and the smoke controlled rather than bought.
Rung 1.
Method
- Ferment your own cabbage, 20 to 25g salt per kilogram, 15 to 20°C, a genuine three to four weeks in a water-sealed crock, rather than buying pasteurised jarred choucroute; the difference in clarity of sourness is the single biggest quality gap this chapter found anywhere.
- Smoke a pork shoulder or knuckle yourself on a Big Green Egg, low and slow with indirect heat around 121°C for several hours, for a depth and cleanness of smoke no shop-bought smoked joint reliably matches.
- Cook the cabbage with the meat's own fat and stock from the start, rather than adding cooked meats at the end, so the choucroute absorbs real flavour rather than sitting beside it as a bland vegetable side.