Göttinger Bierwurst – Savory Sausage Goodness
- Type
- Cooked sausage
- Level
- Easy
- Rating
- Rate this recipe
In this post I show you how you can make a Göttinger Bierwurst yourself. It is simple, quick to prepare and tastes simply heavenly.
The Göttinger Bierwurst, also called Göttinger for short, is a boiled sausage with a coarse meat insert. The literal translation for Bierwurst is “beer sausage”.
It is not called beer sausage because it contains beer as an ingredient. The name comes from the fact that in the past it was usually eaten with a good beer. But nowadays, I would say that it tastes very delicious even without beer.
In the very past, the pig’s urinary bladder was used as a sausage casing. For this reason, the Göttinger beer sausage is also called bladder sausage.
And that is exactly why it is still often sold in a ball shape. To recreate this urinary bladder.
Enough talk, I have neither bladder nor beer! Here you can find the complete Göttinger Bierwurst recipe as a video or to read through.
Have fun and good luck!
Table of Contents
Göttinger Bierwurst – What do you need to make it?
Ingredients per 1 kg
| Ingredient | Grams | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| lean beef e.g. shoulder | 300 g | 30 % |
| pork back fat | 300 g | 30 % |
| lean pork | 250 g | 25 % |
| crushed ice | 150 g | 15 % |
Spices per 1 kg
| Ingredient | Grams |
|---|---|
| salt | 16.5 g |
| cutter phosphates | 4 g |
| mustard seeds | 3 g |
| Cure #1 | 2.5 g |
| black pepper | 2 g |
| nutmeg | 0.5 g |
| coriander | 0.5 g |
| caraway | 0.5 g |
The equipment to make Bierwurst
You need a meat grinder to “grind” the meat. The meat is chopped into small chunks with it.
Food processor / Thermomix
In a food processor, the minced meat and ingredients are mixed into a very fine mass. If you have a Thermomix, you can also use it for this process.
Artificial casings / Jars
To fill your sausage you need either 45 caliber artificial casing or jars to boil it down.
Homemade Göttinger Bierwurst – Step-By-Step Instruction
Day 1: We prepare the meat chunks (the “Einlage”)
Cut the lean pork into cubes. You can adjust the size depending on how big you want them to be in the final sausage.
Put the meat pieces together with the salt, seasoning and cure into a vacuum bag and vacuum seal them. Alternatively, you can use a zip-lock bag (the air should be squeezed out as much as possible).
Now let the meat rest in your refrigerator for at least 24 hours. This process is not a real curing process, but helps pre-seasoning the pieces.
Day 2: Let’s make the sausage
Cut your meat and back fat into strips. The size varies depending on how big your meat grinder is. The bigger the grinder, the bigger your pieces of meat can be.
Put the meat in the freezer for 1-2 hours. This will help later on with the grinding process and the temperature.
Grind your spices (except for the mustard seeds) to a fine powder.
Now it’s time to grind the beef twice through the finest perforated disc.
Then grind the fat and the insert (lean pork pieces) through the largest perforated disc.
Put the beef together with the ground spices and salt in the food processor and mix it.
Add the cutter phosphates and mix the meat. Gradually add some crushed ice from time to time. Mix until it forms a nice cohesive mass. Measure the temperature in between. The meat should not be warmer than 12 C° (53.6 °F), otherwise your mass will lose its binding and the sausage will crumble later on.
Now mix the chopped mass with the ground fat, pork and mustard seeds. Mix the mass with your hands or spatula until a nice binding is formed.
You can fill it into artificial casings or jars. Make sure that not much air gets into the jars.
Now put the jars into a pot with water and at 100 °C / 212 °F for 120 minutes.
If you want to use a casing you need to poach your Göttinger Bierwurst for about 1 minute per mm caliber in 80 C° hot water (176 °F). This means that if you use artificial casings caliber 45 -> You poach them for 45 minutes. The core temperature of the sausage should then be between 70 – 72 C° (158 – 162 °F).
Let it cool down and there it is… Your Göttinger Bierwurst. Enjoy!
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Göttinger Bierwurst and Bierschinken?
What is the difference between Göttinger Bierwurst and Bierschinken?
The names sound close enough that they get confused, but they are two different sausages and the difference is in the insert. Göttinger Bierwurst carries a coarsely ground meat insert — that is what steps 8 and 11 above are making, ground through the largest disc and folded into the fine mass by hand, so you see it as flecks in the cut.
Bierschinken carries ham. Larger pieces, cut by hand rather than ground, sitting in the same kind of fine sausage meat. So both are a fine mass with something visible in it, and what you are looking at in the cut tells you which of the two you have: flecks of ground meat, or proper chunks of ham.
Can you fry Bierwurst?
Can you fry Bierwurst?
Yes, and it is worth doing. Cut it into slices, put them in a dry or lightly oiled pan over medium heat and let them take colour on both sides. The sausage is already fully cooked when it comes out of step 13, so you are browning it rather than cooking it through, and medium heat is enough — too hot and the fat runs out before the surface has browned.
Fried slices with fried potatoes is the classic, and the crust you get is a completely different thing from the cold sausage on bread. Cold is how it is usually eaten and it is what the jar version is for, but do not let that stop you putting it in a pan.
How long does the Göttinger Bierwurst keep?
How long does the Göttinger Bierwurst keep?
Keep the jars in the fridge and use the sausage within 2–3 weeks.
Once the jar has been opened it must be stored in the fridge and the sausage can be kept for about 4-5 days.
Would you please clarify the addition of seasonings to the Bierwurst recipe? This recipe seems to require them to be added twice. I may just be me misinterpreting the way it's written so if you could explain my error, I would be grateful. Alan.
is the ice in this recipe considered to be meat when weighing out thr spices
You suggest that the salt cure and seasonings should be mixed into the "insert," but then you also say to put the ground spices and salt with the beef in the blender. It is a little confusing. Do you separate some of the salt cure and spices to mix with each according to weight or is there something I missed?