24 November 2019

Parmentier de choucroute au porc et au poulet

Everytime I think I've come up with some new food idea, I search after the fact and find that there are dozens of recipes on the internet for dishes that are very similar, if not identical. I guess that means my ideas are basically good, or at least not too far out. My idea this time had to do with a big batch of choucroute garnie — sauerkraut served with smoked meats and sausages, along with boiled potatoes — that we had made a few days earlier.




We had eaten the choucroute at least three times over the course of a week. Neither of us minds eating the same thing several times that way, as long as the food is appetizing and tasty. Here's is a photo of what was left of the sauerkraut and some of the meats we had served it with. I shredded and chopped the smoked meats and even added some cooked chicken to the mix.



What is a parmentier? It's a dish made with potatoes. A man named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier (b. 1737 – d. 1813) was an active promoter of the potato as a good and nutritious food for humans, not just for livestock as it had been seen before. The most common parmentier dish is what we in the anglophone world call a shepherd's pie (made with mutton or lamb) or a cottage pie (often made with beef). In France, people make such meat pies with other meats — slow-cooked, shredded duck, for example.




Since the choucroute we had been eating was served with boiled (steamed) potatoes, and I had some left over, and since the leftover sauerkraut looked like it would be good heated up with a layer of mashed potatoes over the top, I was on my way. I just mashed the potatoes with a fork and added some cream to give them some richness and the right consistency.

Here's the result after I baked it in the oven. I had spread some grated Comté ("Swiss") cheese over the top and then browned it under the broiler (le grill) in the oven. If I had had any Munster cheese on hand, I would have used that, since it is one of the great cheeses of eastern France, where sauerkraut is a specialty. (Some of the recipes I see on the internet call for making this kind of parmentier de choucroute with ground beef, and that might be good, if the idea appeals to you.)




And here's what it looked like on the plate. It was tasty. If you make it, be careful not to salt the potatoes much (if at all), because the sauerkraut and smoked meats are already pretty salty. Serve it hot. We didn't feel the need to have a salad with it because choucroute is, after all, a leafy green vegetable (cabbage). As always, I like carrots with it — with almost anything, really.


Here's what the choucroute garnie looked like the first day we ate some. It's definitely a meat-and-potatoes dish, with sauerkraut as the supporting vegetable. Sauerkraut (the German name) is salted, fermented raw cabbage, and it is much easier on the digestive system than cooked fresh cabbage is. You have to rinse raw sauerkraut in several changes of water before you cook it with white wine or beer and spices for two or three hours. Back in the late 1970s, I worked for a year in the city of Metz, in the Lorraine region, and that's where I learned to love choucroute garnie.

21 comments:

  1. I do adore sauerkraut and we can get some wonderful mild but delicious German kraut from Aldi's. And I do love carrots with most anything. I think this is a great idea, and perfect for this time of year. (We may have snow tomorrow.)

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    1. We have quite a few Aldi supermarkets around here, but not one right in Saint-Aignan. I'll have to drive 10 miles to one of the two that are closest to us and see what's on offer. I usually buy raw sauerkraut in bulk (not in jars or tins) because our Intermarché supermarket sells it for just 60 eurocents a kilogram. It takes long, slow cooking, but it's very good.

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  2. Thank you Ken... it is refreshing to see someone stating clearly the difference between a shepherd's pie and a cottage pie.... the arguements I have had with people who think that they are the same thing!!
    We had "fridge parmentier" the other day... a mish-mash of fridge leftovers, plus a chicken stock cube and a mushroom one.... and a couple of mini-tins... mushrooms and peas.
    It is my favourite alternative to fridge soup!

    Your method of creating your sauerkraut from raw pickled cabbage seems to be [a] cheaper and [b] to your own taste... do you use the slowcooker for that?

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    1. For this batch of sauerkraut, I used the slow-cooker for the first time. I mean, for sauerkraut — I use it regularly for other things, like pulled pork or pulled turkey, and various stews and braised meats. I don't know about down there, but our Intermarché here has raw sauerkraut (choucroute crue) in stock all winter long.

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  3. Looks delicious, Ken! I have seen Parmentier’s grave in Pere la Chaise Cemetery, Paris and it is always adorned with potatoes left by his admirers.

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  4. And thanks for explaining the difference between shepherds pie and cottage pie. I didn’t know that.

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    1. When I was growing up in North Carolina, we often had shepherd's pie at home or in the school cafeteria, and it was always made with ground beef and potatoes. Why? I think it's because we didn't eat lamb at all in N.C., but we ate a lot of beef. Shepherds were Biblical figures "in the fields by night" and didn't exist in our universe. Nous, on n'avait pas gardé les moutons ensemble... "Shepherd" didn't mean much to us in concrete terms.

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  5. They looks so rich and flavorful. Oooh :)
    I've made a batch of vegetable & chicken soup/stew a few times lately, with lots of different vegetables in it, and I decided to add some sauerkraut (just from a can) this last time-- it added wonderful flavor, and brought out other flavors. Delicious.

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    1. That sounds good. I'm hungry again. Luckily there remains a serving of sauerkraut pie for supper.

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  6. Never heard of choucroute parmentier, but it sounds like a very good idea and worth trying for leftovers.

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    1. If you buy choucroute in a tin or jar, it's already left over because it's already cooked. Add some meat (optional) and some mashed potato, and there you have it.

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    2. The choucroute I buy here in Arlington is sold in plastic bags and is raw (or at least it is my impression). I rince it several times before cooking it in my slow-cooker for several hours.It is usually very good.

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    3. The cooking instructions on the package, assuming there are any, would tell you whether it's raw or not. If it says, as it does on the Harris Teeter Shredded Sauerkraut web site, that the sauerkraut just needs to be heated up to boiling in a saucepan or in a microwave oven, that means it's already cooked when you buy it (as is most sauerkraut in France, or at least around Saint-Aignan). It just needs to be reheated. Even if it is pre-cooked, I'm sure your way of preparing it is better than the result you'd get following the instructions on the package.

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    4. Here's an interesting web page about cooking packaged sauerkraut. What I buy here is sold en vrac (in bulk), not pre-packaged. The person at the inttermarché charcuterie/delicatessen counter spoons it out of a big plastic bucket into a barquette(plastic container, weighs it, and sticks a label on the container. Intermarché sells both choucroute crue and choucroute cuite au riesling.

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    5. And here's a recipe on the Boar's Head sauerkraut (sold in a plastic bag) web page for a Reuden sandwich featuring their 'kraut. It doesn't say anything about cooking the 'kraut, just heating it up for 5 or 6 minutes. So the sauerkraut is cooked before being packed in the plastic bag.

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    6. It seems choucroute sold in airtight plastic bags might well be pasteurized, if not cooked.

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    7. I checked this morning the Boar's Head plastic bag in which the sauerkraut was and, as you said, there is no mention if the content is cooked or raw. In fact, it really doesn't matter since I treat the choucroute as if it were raw, cooking it for several hours anyway.

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    8. It may just be pasteurized — not really cooked.

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  7. Mmmm, sauerkraut. This looks like such a good way to use it.

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    1. After the idea took form, it seemed so obvious that sauerkraut would be good this way. After all, served as choucroute garnie, potatoes are one of the almost compulsory accompaniments. Here it's all built in.

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