I rarely rely on recipes, except for two things – baking and sausage making. The latter’s more snooty cousin, the world of farcir, forcemeats, terrines, and other concoctions, especially relies on well executed ratios. This Bavarian recipe for Leberkäse is a slight exception – since it is rather simple to make, I invite you to play around and have some fun with it.
Leberkäse
Leberkäse, or Livercheese, is one of those German foods no one south of the Prussio-Bavarian line can live without. Funnily enough, it contains neither liver nor cheese, the name being a derivation of Leben (life) and kas (a solid object of foodstuffs from which smaller portions are cut or carved, a loaf) – so, literally, the food that keeps you living.
Before starting all this, ensure a proper clean kitchen. Take a baking loaf form, sanitize it vigorously, then grease with lard or any other porcine derived fat (I love using rendered bacon grease for this) and place in the freezer until you need it.
Obtain the following:
- 7 lbs of very lean beef. Any cut will do, you don’t have to waste your prime tenderloin on this.
- 1 lbs of pork neck. A good butcher might be willing to cut this into smaller cubes for you, just make sure (as in any cut), that no physical contaminants (bones, etc.) are in the mix.
- 9 oz bacon, preferably with rind and very preferably made at home or bought in a block, not as the cheap pre-cut megamart pennysaver version.
- 1 onion (if they’re small, 2)
- 1 tsp of ground white pepper
- 2 tsp of majoram
- 3 cloves of garlic, worked into paste
- 6 1/4 cups of water (for a creamier product, replace 1 cup of water with heavy cream)
- optionally some lemon zest
Proceed thusly:
- Grind all meats in your grinder. Additonally you might want to process the neck and bacon together in a food processor, but if you use a very fine die, that won’t be necessary.
- Take about 1/4th of the meat and mix with water and salt until you have a paste.
- repeat for the other 3/4th of the meat
- place the bowl into the refrigerator and let rest for at least one hour, at most four
- Retrieve, add the spices and finely chopped onion.
- [optional] Process in food processor (in batches works best) until you have a fine paste
- Fill into greased baking loaf and bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours
- Enjoy
To mix it up, some, you could do what I did in the image above and add finely chopped peppers, small cheese cubes, hard-boiled eggs, or anything else that makes sense into the loaf. Serve with Bavarian Mustard (we’ll make that soon), eggs sunny-side up, pickles, rustic breads, or on a bun with mustard.
Yummy! This dish has quite a following north of the Prusso-Bavarian border as well. ;-)
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Oh I want to try making this! RT @wildhunt Today we’re making Bavarian Leberkäse: http://bit.ly/5MIKju
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Timely – dh was looking for recipe! RT @foodiePrints: I want to try making this! RT @wildhunt: Bavarian Leberkäse: http://bit.ly/5MIKju
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Hi Jonas,
What about Leberkäs à la Metronet? It’s done in 4 – 6 weeks …
when making forcemeats, i’ve read (in the book “Charcuterie” and elsewhere) it’s essential to keep all the meat as cold as possible during grinding so that the fat doesn’t melt and fall out of suspension.
wikipedia provides this link: http://www.food-from-bavaria.de/en/reg_spez/einzelprodukt.php?an=19&display_lang=en which includes a recipe as well as lots and lots of info.
Surprise! There’s more than one Leberkaese recipe on the web. As for the ice (and, really, “Charcuterie”? Couldn’t you have quoted a grown up book instead of the paint by numbers version for kids? :), see my response to Andreas.
what flies said – i never attempted to make my own Leberkäs but i know for a fact that my favorite butcher uses (crushed) ice for most of his Würstl and Leberkäs recipes.
4. place the bowl into the refrigerator and let rest for at least one hour, at most four
We’ll have to be careful with Leberkaese and ice, even a slight imbalance in moisture can really disturb the emulsification. If you adapt the fat and cream content, you can sub some of the water (or all of it) with crushed ice, but for the home-cook a fridge is the better solution.
I’m just curious about how you got such nice, pink loaves of leberkaese without using curing salts. I’ve always used Prague #1 because my metzger told me that the loaf would turn gray without it.
Ah, you caught me in a little photography ruse. Even the ones I did with 6.25% Sodium Nitrite pink curing salt (Prague #1) looked pale when shot, so I added carrot juice for coloring and boosted the exposure and saturation of the loaf slightly.
If you’re averse to NaNO2 and have a means to control your bacterial contamination, the color fixating can be done with erythorbic acid and the same pink salt in Prague #1. But you’re of course right – for commercial production and if clostridium botulinum is an issue Prague #1 is definitely the way to go.
Me, I am more or less an amateur at this. I learn as I go, especially since it’s really, really, hard to get a good butcher/charcutier from the old world to divulge their real secrets. Sometimes I am lucky and get some hints without having to sell my soul or sign a three year apprenticeship, but more often than not I just make stuff up as I charge in :).