Imagine you are on a trip in Germany (yes that would be awesome), you find yourself in the Southern part of the country. You go into a small local restaurant and on the menu you see Wurstsalat (please repeat it three times fast..) You took a crash course in German way back in high school and you remember wurst means cold cuts and salat mean salad…wait what…?
Yes Wurstsalat is a salad (more like a whole meal made of cold cut sausage, think Bologna. Then, depending in what region you are traveling, you have the plain Wurstsalat, julienned strips of bologna marinated in a brine of broth, apple cider vinegar, slivered onion and some spices, maybe a few pickles.
Then you have the swiss version, with you guessed it, swiss cheese thin sliced and cut into strips added to the mixture. If you find yourself in the very South you might find blood sausage or blood and tongue sausage in it and some people (like my family…) we mix all three together. In Germany it is a meal for lunch or dinner, sometimes served with fries on the side. Typically you will find that combination in big University cities like Heidelberg or Tübingen. Usually it is cheap and as a student you fill your belly with something warm and cold, lots of meat and well the vinegar broth just might help your stomach to manage some alcoholic beverages later.
I prefer the Wurstsalat with bread. Don’t get me wrong I like the fries when they get all soft soaked up with the vinegar brine (yes a few of you probably just flinched by the idea of fries soft and soggy and full of vinegar but hey don’t judge until you try.) Germany is full of great flavorful breads with a nice chewy crust and dense rustic flavor. Tonight I am making fresh pretzel rolls to go with the salad.
Experiment with the brine, the type of sausage to use, the type of cheese, pickles, no pickles, blood sausage no blood sausage…the sky is the limit.
