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It took a long time to convince Heinzelcheese of the Käsekrainer’s merits. Cheese in a sausage, that sounds like so gimmicky and junky. But as is so often the case in that funny thing called life, there came a moment recently when I was able to see the possibility of the positive contrary: thank you Simon, never sleeping sausage man!
„Käsekrainer“, Wikipedia tells us (though not in English), „are lightly smoked parboiled sausages made from medium ground pork meat with ten to twenty percent diced cheese (for example Emmental). All over Austria they are part of the basic offerings at wurst stalls. They are a variant of Slovenian Krain sausages. Käsekrainer’s inventors were two men from Upper Austria, master butcher Herbert Schuh from Buchkirchen collaborating with Fritz Thalhammer in the late 1960s.“ Supposedly those two guys were tired of watching the cheese burn on the barbecue when they stuffed it into bratwurst. In the version they developed the diced cheese is part of the sausage meat and protected by the casing. So it’s a cool concept – although it needs a quality-orientated implementation to please beyond vinous Vienna and nocturnal Ottakringer beer.
It’s kind of ironic that it is Simon Ellery, a New Zealander, who not only makes Berlin’s best black pudding but also enabled me to see Käsekrainer’s fun potential. I’m not entirely sure he picked this up while studying for his German master butcher certificate, and butcher Erchinger in Prenzlauerberg where Simon has his production facilities, seems to be much more into regionally traditional fare. But „The Sausage Man who Never Sleeps“ as Simon calls his label, buys the Emmental cheese from the similarly nocturnal Berlin cheesemonger Fritz Blomeyer. And those sausages, slowly fried, have exactly the right melting cheesiness to balance their beechwood smokiness and be a real pleasure at the dinner table, cutlery and wine included.
Therefore Simon will be part of the long and wonderful Cheese Night – on Friday, November 8 from 9pm on the Sausage Man himself will fry and serve at Geist im Glas in Neukölln, and there will be butter-washed Bourbon Old Fashioned on offer – perfect start into the long Cheese Berlin weekend. See you all there and cheerio!
This a monthly series which I have been publishing for years. You can subscribe here, to get the latest cheese delivered directly on to your screen.
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