Onion “Mettwurst” (onion flavored cold, spreadable meat German style)

spreadable frankonian cooked mettwurst with tomatoe

Next to pork knuckle, Weissbier, potatoes and Sauerkraut, what else is German food famous for? Maybe not a lot, I hear you say. But for those, that ever had the pleasure of staying in Germany, I always hear that they enjoyed the rich breakfasts in the morning. Next to fresh bread and bread rolls you will enjoy a vast variety of fresh fruits, marmalades and cheese, sausages and cold cuts. Yes, cold cuts for breakfast, you heard me. I am not sure in which other country you will start your day with a white sausage or a fresh bread roll with some slices of cold cut or meat spread on it, some Germans will even enjoy that with a Weissbier (weiss beer). Today I will post about my trial of making Mettwurst, which is a type of spreadable German cold meat, something like uncooked minced pork, similar like Tatar but much better of course. Again, apart from the curing salt (nitrite salt), everything was more or less easily available. The only medium difficulty about this recipe is the starch that will bind the aspic that will be created during your sausage making process. Using potato (or corn) starch will bind the fat inside the meat spread so the spread will stay nice and silky and easy to spread.

Ingredients for approximately 1000 gram of “mettwurst”:

• 500 g bacon (or real fatty meat from the stomach)
• 333 g pork shoulder with approximately 10% fat
• 167 g lean beef

Spices

• 14.7 g curing salt              
• 2.3 g pepper      
• 1.3 g bell pepper powder            
• 1.3 g Nutmeg    
• 0.3 g Coriander 
• 1.3 g Sugar         
• 40 g Roasted onions       
• 0.7 g Ascorbic acid, Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, so if you don't have, simply use that one, but make sure its tasteless version
• 20 g Potato starch (alternatively you can also use some corn starch)

First you cook all the meats for about 45 minutes, then the meat is being weighted, don’t weigh the meat before you cook it as the mass will be reduce during cooking. Keep back 25% of the liquid from cooking the meat.

Now it’s about grinding the meat with all the spices through the meat grinder, then please add the broth. After this mix everything well together and pass it one more time through the grinder. Now everything is ready to be filled in a glass or in the sausage skin (take the really big caliber ones if you do this). As I didn’t find the sausage skins, I chose to fill the mettwurst in the glass. That works like this. Get yourself some preserving jars. First, cook the empty glasses, the rubber sealing and the cover in boiling water to disinfect everything. Take the glasses and fill every glass ¾ full with the mett and close it up with the rubber sealed cover. Now you prepare a big cooking pot with water that you preheat on a constant heat of 80 degrees Celsius. Don’t put the heat over 80 degrees Celsius or the sausage will have a problem later. Stay at exactly 80 degrees Celsius or slightly under. I use a laser temp gun to monitor the water constantly. Now you cook the glasses with the meat for 2 hours in this water. After two hours, you take them out and put them aside and cover them with a towel, so they slowly cool down. If they cool down too fast, the glasses might explode. After they are cool, you can store them, open them in the next morning and enjoy the metwurst on a slice of bread.