Beer Brats in Tenerife? Sí! You Betcha!
For the past few years cultural appropriation has been quite the hot topic. This officially means a member of a dominant culture using something from a minority culture outside of its original context. Sometimes it’s debatable, like if a European wears a sombrero, and sometimes it’s just plain ugly, like if a white person has dreadlocks. Whatever the case though, there are no examples of culinary cultural appropriation. That said, I took a cultural recipe from Germany that made its way to Wisconsin—my home state—where it was perfected, and now I as a member of a cultural minority in Tenerife am sharing it here. Of course I’m talking about:
BEER BRATS
Bratwurst itself has been around for at least 700 years, before the Spanish even discovered Tenerife and the rest of the Canary Islands, and appropriated everything. Usually made of pork, this popular sausage would typically be grilled, and eaten with a side of bread, and mustard. Sauerkraut as well, but that’s a different issue here on the island.
Sharing cooking techniques from around the world
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of attending an American frat party, you can undoubtedly conjure in your memory the smell of stale beer. The smell of boiling beer is not dissimilar either. This is why I would recommend lots of ventilation if you have to do this part inside. But don’t worry, any unpleasant odors will be more than made up for with the final product. Here’s what you’ll need:
bratwurst;
one can of beer, preferably a light beer or lager;
one onion;
hot dog buns or something better but relatively the same shape and size;
sauerkraut;
ketchup;
mustard (the sort you’d use for a sandwich, not Dijon or strong mustard); and
side dishes.
Now for the big question: what in the Spanish-speaking world do beer brats have to do with Tenerife? Or more specifically, why would you make them here? The answer is simple: because you can! You should! And I’m sure that you will, after reading this recipe.
Your neighbors will love when you cook
Peel and slice the onion into thin strips, and lightly fry them in a pot in oil for two or three minutes over medium high heat. Then add about half a cup of water, stir once more, then crack open that beer and slowly pour it in. The water first is very important, because if you pour in the beer first, the resulting cloud of stench will be a little overpowering. The water dilutes this, and in fact actually prevents it.
Poke each brat twice with a fork—around one-third the total length from each end—and carefully drop them into the boiling beer broth. Depending on the shape of the pot, your brats might not be completely covered in liquid. This is not a problem if you stir them every few seconds. Keep this going for about five minutes, and then remove them, and let them sit on a towel for a moment so excess moisture on the outside can evaporate.
Brats after boiling.
Save those onions so you can caramelize them!
Assuming your grill is ready (you can’t hold your hand over it for more than a second or two), start grilling your beer brats. You might be asking why even bother boiling them in beer? It’s because in medieval Wisconsin, there was no drinking water. But seriously, keep one brat and don’t boil it in beer. Cook them all at the same time, and that way you’ll be able to taste the difference, and you won’t need more explanation.
Your neighbors will love when you grill
The grilling part is easy. Rotate them on the grill when they’re browned or branded by the grill. When all sides are looking good, put them in your bun, add some ketchup and mustard, and I personally highly recommend adding sauerkraut if you can find it. I haven’t been able to yet. If you find it in a jar, then you should just need to heat it up on a pan for a couple minutes. Enjoy!
A very popular side dish is potato salad. My favorite sort of potato salad is mustard-based, but a lot of people might accuse me of cultural appropriation for saying so. My defense is thus: I also used to live in South Carolina. Mustard-based potato salad is not debatable. Don’t knack* it unless you’re prepared to do your wurst*. (I am truly sorry for this horrible pun.)
Everyone loves brats
Katrin is new to the joys of beer brats, but she’s quickly being won over. However, she decided to add her own brilliant side dishes. Grilled corn on the cob (this was actually my suggestion), grilled bell peppers, grilled chorizo links, and her own invention of sliced baked potatoes with zucchini.
The corn was a major disappointment. I can grill corn on the cob as well as any woman can grill a man for not coming home the night before. The problem this time was the corn itself: I’m not entirely sure it was sweet corn. Might have been feed corn. It was simply too tough to enjoy. But if you want to try it wherever you are, you boil it for no more than five minutes to super-hydrate the kernels, add butter and salt, wrap in aluminum foil, and grill, turning once in a while. Don’t overgrill it or you could get a similar result even if you have quality corn.
Chorizos before grilling.
Chorizo is popular throughout Spain, and these small links were delicious when grilled. The brats were my favorite for obvious reasons, but Katrin was more partial to these little red sausages. We plan on exploring all things chorizo in the future as well, from how to cook with it, how to grill it, and even how to pronounce it.
Canary potatoes? Sí. Canary corn? No means no in Spanish
The new kitchen invention? Take Canary potatoes, slice them about two-thirds down to the bottom, and insert thin slices of zucchini in between the potato slices. Add some butter, garlic powder, and salt, then foil them and stick them on the grill. Try to dedicate a large portion of your grill space to this, because you won’t have much success grilling anything above the potatoes, which should be added directly to the coals.
Katrin says they’re simply her own innovation on the popular Swedish recipe called Hasselback potatoes, so I’ll give my own innovation to the name: Nicklehoff potatoes.
If you have trouble finding brats in Tenerife, we had success at Lidl again. It’s also the only place I’ve seen buttermilk, which I will talk about at length in another post, because it has so many delicious uses. The problem I have with local dairy products, however, is that none of it is locally made. There simply aren’t the pastures here for dairy cows. Each container of buttermilk is very small, but I can’t understand why it couldn’t be in a larger package, to reduce waste. Sort of like how locally sold yogurt is sold in teeny, tiny disposable cups.
Can you cook without producing waste?
Here at Tenerife Food, we believe in sustainability, not wasting food or materials, and generally being good consumers who don’t overconsume. That said, starting with this post, we will be talking more about these topics from here on out. The goal will not be to preach to the converted, or change people’s minds, or even to force a foreign environmental culture on a local majority culture. That would be “cultural inappropriation”, to coin a word. Instead, I’ll try to use humor and logic to point out people’s backward thinking when it comes to maintaining a clean environment. One that our grandchildren can also enjoy, assuming they don’t have dreadlocks, in which case they would be disavowed.
Here’s a hint of what’s to come in the next post: the Canary Islands have made headlines around the world recently because of protests against unsustainable tourism. These kinds of protests are actually spreading to other cities as well, for example Berlin, and Venice. But every major “victory”, such as banning plastic straws or the European Union’s new tethered bottlecap policy, is often actually a step in the opposite direction. Yay, we banned plastic straws, which were made from oil, and now we’ve replaced them with paper straws, which require even more forests to be felled, reducing the amount of oxygen on the planet. That’s a win!
That sort of humor and logic. At least Tenerife Food is printed on eco-friendly digital paper. Hope you enjoy the beer brats!
