Colmar is famous for its waterways and architecture.

Twenty-two years ago my husband Warren asked me “What is your mother making us for dinner, tonight”?  As I mumbled the words “choucroute”, I felt my heart sink.  “What’s choucroute?” replied Warren innocently.  “Sauerkraut“, I whispered.  Warren’s face fell, and a look of a trapped animal appeared across his face.  It was too late to cancel and escape from the doom of a sauerkraut dinner.

Now to understand Warren’s reaction, you need to know that his mother, Georgia, was a typical mid-western cook of German extraction.  Her idea to cook sauerkraut was to get it out of a can and fry it in a skillet.  An epicurean nightmare.  However, I, of the French mother, loved choucroute, an Alsatian delight in which the choucroute is cooked for hours in spices, wine, and meats.

So Warren, the captured prisoner of doom, sat almost in tears at my mother’s dinner table, hesitantly put a small amount of choucroute on his fork and swallowed.  Suddenly, his eyes lit up and a smile came over his face.  “No way, this is sauerkraut” he said, “this is food for the Gods”, and had two more helpings.  Now when we are touring around Alsace, Warren is always chatting up the locals to find out which restaurant makes the best choucroute and makes a beeline to that restaurant.

If you ever go to the Alsatian countryside of France in the fall, you’ll notice that cabbage is king.  Cabbage, potatoes and pork are the main staple of Northern Europe especially in the winter. And no one makes choucroute better than the Alsatian brasseries.  It is a delight and excellent for the digestive systems, so I’m told.

Now, every year we host a New Year’s Day party, and celebrate by serving choucroute and Riesling wines from Alsace.  In Northern Europe, it is good luck to start the new year with choucroute, and what could be better, than to make sure that friends start out the year on a good and healthy path.

So I part with you my recipe.  Bear in mind that choucroute is very flexible, so throw in as much pork, sausages, and potatoes as you want.  Warren loves the tiny sausages, I like Aidell’s Roasted Garlic and Gruyere, and Christie loves kielbasa.  I make mine in a crock pot and triple the recipe since my pot is holds 6 quarts. And yesterday, my daughter Suzanne begged me to make choucroute, Alsatian sauerkraut.  “Mom, I love it, it’s easy to heat up for school and it fills me up.  And make sure you make it with extra sauerkraut”.

The Real Choucroute of Alsace – approx. 4 hours of cooking

Ingredients

1 bag of sauerkraut – you can find it at the grocery stores in a refrigerated area near the

pickles and hot dogs.  MAKE SURE YOU RINSE the sauerkraut 3 TIMES

1 onion thinly slices

3 tablespoon of lard

1 pound (or a bag) of sauerkraut

Cup of white wine

1 apple coarsely chopped

10 juniper berries tied in a cheese cloth

Chicken stock

1 pound slab of smoke lean bacon

Several peeled potatoes

1 tablespoon kirch (optional)

4 smoked pork chops

4 high quality Frankfurt sausages or any favorite sausage

Heaping tsp. of caraway seeds

DIRECTIONS

In a Dutch oven or crock pot, cook onion and lard until soft.

Add sauerkraut and a dash of water.

Simmer mixture for 5 minutes, stirring often

Add wine, apple, juniper berries and enough stock to cover and cook on low heat for 3 hours

Add bacon and potatoes.  Cook for 30 minutes

Add kirsch, pork chops and sausages, and cook for a remaining 30 minutes.

Remove juniper berries before serving and sprinkle caraway seeds.

Salt and pepper to taste

Often I’ll throw in ham slices, a ham bone or hocks for flavoring.