It is Choucroute time, at last!!!!
... And no, we are not talking about Brigitte Bardot's famous 1960's hairstyle!....
The heart of the matter today is the famous French sauerkraut and sausage fest, the ultimate "baby-it's-cold-outside" dish from the Alsace region of France, served by ALL famous and venerable brasserie institutions of Paris France, and for years now, in the midst of the winter, The Paris Bistro in sugarhouse....
Choucroute is a famous Alsatian recipe for preparing sauerkraut with sausages, salted and smoked Pork as well as potatoes.
Although sauerkraut is a traditionally German and Eastern European dish, the French annexation of Alsace and Lorraine following the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 brought this dish to the attention of French chefs and it has since been widely adopted in France.
In principle, there is no fixed recipe for this dish - any preparation of hot sauerkraut with meat and potatoes could qualify - but in practice there are certain traditions, favorite recipes, and stereotypical garnishes that are more easily called choucroute garnie than others.
While the Parisian brasseries serve hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of Choucroute daily, they often serve a very bland and tasteless version of what Eman and I lovingly cook small batches of, slowly and for hours, sausage by sausage, always in my Le Creuset French Oven . The whole process cannot be rushed in any way and literally takes us two days.... Mr Siegfried makes our sausages and delivers them on that very day.... Our kraut is fresh, not pasteurized and thus crispier than anything we have ever found thus far....
Check out the making of our choucroute on this slideshow. Click here
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