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Zwiebelmettwurst – A Classic German Spread With Onions

In this post I’ll show you how to make Zwiebelmettwurst yourself. It is perfect for beginners! You need few ingredients and with a little effort you get an extremely tasty cured sausages.

Zwiebelmettwurst is one of the spreadable cured sausages and is served fresh, smoked, fine, medium or coarse. I opted for an unsmoked version here. 

The biggest advantage of a homemade Zwiebelmett is that you can adjust the fat content as well as the taste yourself. 

Enough talking, you can find the complete Zwiebelmettwurst recipe either as video or in written format. 

Have fun and good luck making it!


Making your own Zwiebelmettwurst – What do you need?

Ingredients for your Zwiebelmettwurst

Zwiebelmettwurst - all ingredients

For 1000 g of Zwiebelmettwurst:

  • 50 % pork shoulder (500g)
  • 50 % pork belly (500g)

Spices per 1000 g of Zwiebelmettwurst:

Variant with wild garlic:

  • Additional 20-50 g wild garlic per kg of meat


Equipment for making Zwiebelmettwurst

Meat Grinder

You need a meat grinder to “grind” the meat. The meat is chopped into small chunks with it.

Artificial casings / Jars

To fill your sausage you need either 45 caliber artificial casing or jars to boil it down.


Making Zwiebelmettwurst – Step-By-Step Instructions

1. Cut your meat 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.

Zwiebelmettwurst-cut the meat

2. Quarter your onions and add them to the meat.

Zwiebelmettwurst- onion

2. Grind your spices to a fine powder.

Zwiebelmettwurst - spices

3. Add the spices to your meat and massage them in

Zwiebelmettwurst- spice to meat

4. Put the meat in the freezer for 1 hour to freeze. 

Zwiebelmettwurst- frezzer

5. Grind the meat and onions through the smallest perforated disc of your meat grinder. 

Zwiebelmettwurst- grind

6. Mix the mass well. It should have a nice binding. You can optionally add more herbs and spices. A lovely variation for example is with wild garlic.

Zwiebelmettwurst- mix

7. Fill the mass into sterile natural casings or jars. Make sure that as little air as possible gets into the casing. Also pay attention to the temperature of your meat. This should never exceed 7 degrees Celsius (44 Fahrenheit), otherwise the shelf life is no longer guaranteed.

Zwiebelmettwurst - natural casings

8. Twist the casing 2 to 3 times and tie a knot with a kitchen string. 

Zwiebelmettwurst - twist and knot

9. Leave the sausage in the refrigerator overnight. Afterwards it is cured and ready to eat. 

Zwiebelmettwurst - overnight

10. Your Zwiebelmettwurst is ready. I wish you good luck and have fun making it! 🙂

Zwiebelmettwurst - ready


What is the shelf life of Zwiebelmettwurst?

You should use your Zwiebelmettwurst within 1 to 2 days after cutting it open. In the casings, it should keep for about 5-7 days in the refrigerator. 

Alternatively, you can freeze it, then it will keep longer.


Tags

Cured Sausages


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  1. May try ! But would like to make fine going headcheeze without boiling the head like the parents did ?

      1. Ok but seriously

        Wie finde ich in Amerika Fleisch. Das auch dog zum Konsum okay ist ?

        Ich hab immer Gehör wenn man mett Macht soll man frisches Fleisch nehmen. Und hier sind die aber ja alle schonmal gefroren. Auch wenn du zu nem Farmer gehst ?!

        Oder ist das gefrorene okay ?

        Danke vielmals

  2. Hi Daniel,
    I have lived in the Uk for 16 years now and I miss it so much and today I stumbled across your tutorial and I can’t wait to try it!
    I just wouldn’t know where to buy a good meat grinder, do you have any recommendations?
    Thank you
    Sarah

    1. Hey Sarah,

      just make sure it is stainless steel and is sturdy and has enough power. Then it will last you a long time. If you want to experiment first go with a cheap manual one and switch to a electric one later on.

      Cheers
      Daniel

  3. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you. After living in the states for 34 years the only thing I still miss is Zwiebelwurst. I’ve learned to substitute or do without everything else. When I visit Germany every 3 years or so I’m eating nothing but zwiebelwurst on my sandwiches for 4 weeks straight. I am beyond excited to have this recipe and I’ve made it trice. Nothing better on good Bauernbrot from the Fresh Market or Whole Foods. You are my hero!
    And thanks for throwing in the word Schuppdiewupp in another recipe. I haven’t heard that word since I’ve arrived in 1987.

  4. Lecker! I am drooling already. Just came back from 3 weeks in Germany and yes Zweibelmettwurst was had everyday. Can you please tell me where I can get the casings? I looked on The Sausage Maker site but a verbatim search did not pull it up.

    Thank you so much for posting these recipes!

  5. where to get wild garlic while in Germany we had mettwurst mitt garlic severaal times week. we lived in Kusel Platz and Loved it.

    1. Propably only when it is in season. You could use normal garlic or garlic powder if you want to. Even without it tastes amazing.

  6. Daniel,
    I wanted to thank you for the ZwiebelMettWurst recipe. I tried this as my first ever wurst receipe and it came out so good. I used the fine plate but will use a coarse plate next time as I like it more coarse. I have done a lot of Charcuterie and have been doing old Bavarian recipes but this is a bucket list and you helped. Thank you so much. Now if I can just make Leberkäse correctly instead of it coming our like German Meatloaf / Falscherhase. Haha.

      1. I’m making the Zwiebelwurst for the second time today.
        For those asking where to buy cure 1 (pink salt)…I bought it from Amazon. They sent me enough to last a lifetime.
        Thanks for your looking after us “Ausländers”, who just can’t live without our Wurst.

  7. Is your Cure #1 the same as Prague Powder 1?

    I also understood Cure #1 is used for meat that requires cooking, brining, smoking or canning while Cure #2 is used or dry cured meats. From the recipe I take it that the Zwiebelmettwurst is neither cooked, brined, smoked or canned, and I wonder why the recipe uses Cure #1? Thanks

    1. Hey Brat,

      yes, it is the same. As for the Cure #1 or #2. In Germany we use Nitritpökelsalz which is a premixed salt + cure #1 for every cured sausage. If you want you can exchange it for #2 however it also works completely fine with #1.

      Hope that helps
      Daniel

  8. Hi, I can’t wait to try this and have missed it so much since last visit to Germany. How can I be sure that there is no danger of trichinosis in the pork? Is it sufficient to use the cure?

    Thanks so much for your speedy reply. I have all my ingredients ready.

    1. I have never heard of such thing. I googled and it seems like it should not be in your pork if it is slaughtered, checked and processed right.

  9. Thank you, I love onion/Zwiebel mettwurst. Maybe it was a different suprmarket chain, but I did find there was a difference between ZM in Saxony (good) and Bavaria (not so good). Is Hackepeter the Berlin version.
    Danke Sehr.

  10. Sollte man es mit Rauch machen wollen, räuchert man das Fleisch als es noch ganz ist (bzw. in Stücken) oder nach dem Zerhacken (Fleischwolf)?

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