Tailgate Central: Don't Murder Your Brats

Every week, FanHouse's Pete Holiday whips up a tasty dish for your next tailgate, and makes a god-awful mess in the process, to bring you Tailgate Central. This week, however, Pete has graciously allowed FanHouse's Mark Hasty to yammer on about some sort of sausage or something.

Twenty-five years ago, the bratwurst was both a regional and an ethnic food in this country. If you weren't from a community in the Midwest with a sizable German-American population, you'd likely never eaten one. Now, though, the brat is everywhere, and tailgating is one of the big reasons why.

Bratwurst is a little trickier to cook than burgers and hot dogs, however. You know this is true if you've ever been handed a brat which was burnt on the outside but still oinking in the middle. Even if you're a total klutz, however, it's still possible to learn how to make a brat as tasty as any you'd find outside Lambeau Field on a game day. You just need to know how to buy them, how to cook them, and how to serve them.

BUYING BRATS: You have three basic choices. Precooked brats (usually sold as "stadium brats") have been steamed or boiled before being packaged. All you have to do to them is throw them on the grill and brown them a little. Smoked brats are also fully cooked and just need the same treatment, though to me, they don't really taste like brats.

If you want the best results, though, you've got to start from raw.

In much of the country, you've basically got one choice of brat: Johnsonville. They're made in a factory just outside Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the most brat-daffy town in a state where brats are everyday food. Do people in Wisconsin eat Johnsonville brats? You'd better believe they do. But if you live near a butcher shop or a German delicatessen, you can probably get handmade brats, and they're worth the trouble to find.

I live in Wisconsin, and around here almost every town has a butcher shop or grocery store that makes its own brats. Some of them have more than two dozen varieties. Some of those varieties, like the paprika-spiked Hungarian brats, are really good. Others are clearly the work of bored, sociopathic butchers who wonder if it's possible to make a brat which is so weird not even a Wisconsinite will buy it. (For the record, the brats on the right of the grill are chicken-vegetable brats. They were actually pretty good.)

Whatever kind of brat you buy, though, know this: You need buns. Puffy, presliced hot dog buns won't work. You need something with some heft to it. Any store which sells enough brats will probably have brat buns available in its bakery department. Otherwise, small sub rolls or even sections of French bread will work.

COOKING BRATS: If you bought stadium brats or smoked brats, just grill them until they're nicely browned and sizzling. Cooking raw brats requires three things: a low-to-medium fire, lots of fussing, and lots of time. You need to turn them often; you sometimes need to spritz them with water so they don't burn on the outside; worst of all, you have to wait about 20 minutes to eat them. They're worth the trouble, but seriously, you need to keep the fire low.

Then again, who are you trying to kid? The last time you lit your grill, you created a fireball so huge Vladimir Putin called the White House to deny responsibility for it. Buy stadium brats, or, better still, buy raw brats and precook them yourself. You can cook them in water. You can cook them in water with some onion added to it. Best of all, you can cook them in beer with onions.

Don't panic. For six brats, you'll need two beers and maybe a little splash of water, plus either a sliced raw onion or a small palmful of dried onion flakes. Whatever you're cooking them in, bring it just to a boil, back the heat down to medium-low, then let those bad boys stew for about eight minutes. Take them out of the pot and they're ready to go on the grill for a good browning. (You can certainly do this the night before your tailgate party.)

SERVING BRATS: The classic way to serve a brat is on a bun, with brown mustard, sauerkraut, and maybe a little chopped onion. Unless you're dining with the members of a fundamentalist sausage cult, however, you can put anything on a brat you'd put on a hot dog. Ketchup, relish, cheese, mayonnaise, sauteed onions and peppers, marinara sauce, lettuce, tomatoes ... I've seen it all. Except chili. Then again, the taco brat is gaining a foothold here in Wisconsin, so it's probably just a matter of time until I start seeing the Chili Cheese Brat. (Oh, come on. Of course there will be cheese.)

Whatever you put on your brat, and however you cook it, know that you're not just eating a tailgate staple. You're eating a food that would have remained obscure without the influence of football. Treat them with reverence--and plan on having more than one.