18 January 2025

La (première) choucroute de 2025... chez nous

I did something different with my raw choucroute this year. I cooked it in apple cider. Normandy cider, of course. It was labeled as cidre doux, meaning "mild" or "sweet" cider. In fact, it wasn't what I'd call "sweet" at all. It was no sweeter than Riesling wine, which is made in Alsace (the home of choucroute, they say), and maybe less acidic. This cider has 2% alcohol in it, which is much less than the alcohol in wine. I'll make it this way again. because it was delicious.

Below, you can see some of the meat we cooked to go with choucroute. They include a piece of palette de porc fumée. That's a pork shoulder blade roast that has been smoked over beech wood. The sliced pork is poitrine de porc, similarly smoked. That's pork breast or "belly" (a.k.a. bacon). I soaked the palette and the poitrine in cold water overnight to reduce their smokiness and their saltiness. The sausages are smoked pork sausage, also beech-wood smoked. The ones we might call hot dogs or wieners are saucisses de Francfort (frankfurters). I didn't soak either of the sausages.

Again below, you can see the choucroute cooked in cider with onions, carrots, and spices. I didn't put in lardons, but I diced up a couple of slices of sandwich ham (jambon de Paris) and put them in. The choucroute cooked that way for about two hours on low heat. Cooking the choucroute and meats took all morning, but most of that time was just waiting as everything simmered slowly on the top of the stove.

Meanwhile, I simmered the palette de porc in a separate pot of fresh water. It kind of fell apart, but I like it that way (it's tender and tasty). I added some of the resulting broth to the choucroute for flavor and let two slices of the poitrine de porc cook for about 45 minutes on top of the sauerkraut. I poached the sausages and boiled the potatoes for about 30 minutes in the palette broth. Both of the sausages were sold pre-cooked, so the just needed to be heated up.

1 comment:

  1. I regularly cook pork and rabbit with cider... I'm out shopping this afternoon and will see if I can find some raw sour-germans to cook with cider... I tend to use Valderance ciders as I find them the best for flavour...

    French cider is way better than UK cider.... and far more complex and sharp and tannins bite your tastebuds...
    and supplied at a lower gravity all round...
    Doux (2% ABV) doesn't exist in the UK...
    Traditionel at 4.5% ABV is the bottom end of bland [unless you buy direct from the farms in the West country] and....
    Brut at 5.6 or 6% ABV is just about there... a bottom end gravity...
    most UK commerical ciders, eg: Stronbow, are around 8% ABV... and there are some at higher gravities still, some must be augmented with sugar syrup... White Diamond [the tramp's best friend] is 12% ABV, and clear, "white" and dirt cheap in 2litre bottles.... but all, except for one or two makers [Frome in Herefordshire is one such... beautiful stuff!!] are relatively bland and taste better straight from the fridge.

    However most of the old cider making apples in the UK have been grubbed up.... Frome is quite new on the market (1990) and does some traditional old ciders that are much closer in flavour to the French ones.... because they are using old cider varieties, not excess commercial fruit.

    But France has some of the best orchards and best varieties.... one superb cider apple is Black Dabinett... cannot be eaten... lovely and juicy but like sucking sloes!! We grow one here called Katy... a small, red apple that is also a good eater, full of juice and in the UK, Weston's Cider actually market it as a single varietal cider.
    But even the French Doux is way nicer than a great many of the Uk's offerings... 'scuse the screed, but I do like a good cider... and even more a good perry!!

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