Beer & Bratwurst: An Oktoberfest Toas-Tite

On this All Hallow’s Eve, we’re getting a little German.  No, I’m not talking about costumes, I’m talking about food.  Beer, sausage, sauerkraut, onions, pretzels, beets, red cabbage…but in Toas-Tite form.  Unfortunately, we can’t fit all that in a Toas-Tite so we’re going with the main components.

Ingredients:

• 2 slices of bread
• 1/3 of a bratwurst sausage, browned and sliced (assuming your brat is roughly 5 ounces, 1/3 will work like a charm)
• 1 heaping tablespoon of sauerkraut
• Mustard, to taste
• Butter
• An ice cold beer

Directions:

1. If your sausage is raw, start off by browning it in a skillet until you’re very hungry and it’s nice and golden.  Depending on the size….erm….of your sausage, you can slice half or one-third into rounds.

2. Now get started on the sandwich part by buttering one side of each slice of bread.
3. Place your bread in your pie iron with the buttered side toward the grill clamshells.
4. On top of that, layer your sausage, mustard, and sauerkraut nice and high.

5. Carefully put your other slice of bread on top, close your grill, and trim any excess bread.
6. Grill for 3 to 4 minutes on either side (switching every 2 minutes or so) until your sandwich is toasted to perfection.
7. Throw it on a plate with some extra sausage, kraut, and mustard.  Grab your beer and dig in.

Notes from the Kitchen

For this one, we tried two different breads: a New York rye bread and German farm bread.  And the result?  Both were brilliant.

The rye bread really accentuated the flavor of the caraway seeds from the sauerkraut.  But keep in mind…if you go with rye, the slices tend to be smaller than other sliced breads.  You may need to turn one so the longest side of the bread is horizontal toward the grill and the other so the longest side is vertical to get a seal around the edge.

The German farm bread also worked really well.  It had less of an impact on the flavor of the sandwich than the rye bread did, but it toasted really nicely.

So which was better?  Boy and I debated all through dinner (although it was more a debate with ourselves than with each other) and we couldn’t decide.  Ultimately, we each decided to end on the rye bread sandwich but neither of us wanted to definitively say that one was better.  They were both awesome.

Now on to the sauerkraut.  We go to the farmers market fairly frequently.  And at the farmers market, one of our favorite things to taste is sauerkraut.  And one of our favorite sauerkraut purveyors is Farmhouse Culture.  Their horseradish and leek kraut is seriously a-mazing but for this one, we went with the classic caraway.  The best side effect of this Toas-Tite is that now we have this delectable sauerkraut in our fridge.

And last but certainly not least, for mustard, we used Tracklement Whole Grain mustard because the whole grain pops in a sandwich like this but pick your favorite and it will be fabulous.

So go get on your Lederhosen, grab your beer stein, and celebrate October even if it’s almost November.

Beer stein featured image from Flickr’s uLe @ Dortmund