We’ve never gotten in the habit of celebrating American Thanksgiving here in Germany, but as I mentioned on Twitter today, by coincidence we are going out for a traditional meal this Thanksgiving evening. The local Wirtschaftsrunde (chamber of commerce, sort of) is holding their annual Grünkohl dinner. I’ve never had it, and I suspect that Frauke is taking me along to the dinner not just to keep her company, but so that we can split one portion and she only has to eat half as much.
According to the Internets, Grünkohl translates as “curly kale” and is a north German dish often served with Pinkel (small sausages) (no, not pinkeln, that’s something else). Judging from this picture from Wikipedia, the vegetable content of the meal is actually quite small…
Wish us luck, or at least Guten Appetit!
Update after the fact: The Grünkohl was in fact very tasty! Details in the comments below.
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Oh, we have that every year for my grandmothers birthday, and a lot of relatives are looking forward to it months in advance.
Btw, this is our recipe: http://rezepte.blogger.de/stories/40079/
Andrea Frick from Serendipita left this comment on Facebook, I’m sure she won’t mind if I quote it here.
“I realize that the Grünkohlessen is probably already over, but I just have to comment as a Northern German in exile. (Noone knows Grünkohl here.) As a kid I didn’t like Grünkohl, but now I think it’s delicious – I’m just not a fan of Speck or Bauchfleisch, so I usually don’t eat it. I especially like Grützwurst, but it’s not common everywhere, so I don’t know if you had any. Did you like it?”
I’ve recently had my first Grünkohl traditional meal – I guess it was right when all the restaurants began offering it when it was cold. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s not bad. I’m from Texas – family from East Texas – and it reminded me of a bit of greens – mustard or turnip greens that we would growing up. But, then it just made me want hot pepper sauce & cornbread with it – that’s a whole other thing!
The picture above was pretty accurate, in particular the fatty meat to vegetable ratio. It was my wife’s first Grünkohl meal as well. She grew up on the Baltic coast, which must be outside the “Kohl und Pinkel” radius (which seems to be centered around Bremen).
We both concluded that Grünkohl tastes much better than it looks. The kale picks up the flavor from the onions and the meat, so it turns out to be quite tasty. We didn’t get a calorie count, but I’m sure you don’t want to do this too often. We’ll certainly do it again next year.
It’s definitely also common at the Baltic Coast, at least in Schleswig-Holstein (don’t know about Mecklenburg-Vorpommern).
You’ll find variations in every county. I’m used to a larger part of curly kale from ‘Dithmarschen’ and Flensburg. In ‘Nordfriesland’ they put oak flakes within the kale. You can also find small potatoe pieces within the kale instead of fried potatoes. And sometimes both
In Göttingen I’ve seen an advert for Grünkohl with “Brägenwurst” which is in Low German language. I’ll leave it to you to translate
Ha ha – that’s exactly what we had for dinner at a friend’s house tonight. Down here near Hannover they sometimes call it Braunkohl instead of Grünkohl and it’s normally served with the Bregenwurst (they used to put brains in it but I don’t think they’re allowed to do that any more!) rowi mentioned. Our hosts also dished up some Oldenburger Pinkel that were really, really good.
I am SO full now.
So you had Kohl und Pinkel without going on a Kohlfahrt? You missed half the fun then. Shameless plug for a page I wrote almost 10 years ago: Kohlfahrt – An explanation for Bavarians and others