Serve The Right Sausage At Your Own Oktoberfest Party

All over the world, people are really getting into the German spirit this month. I mean, with Oktorberfest on, the real Germans, part Germans, and wish-they-were Germans are really getting into German culture. Yet you can tell those who know what they are doing from those who don’t just by looking at the food.

You see, while Oktoberfest is a beer festival at heart, the soul of the event is the food. After all, you can’t very well enjoy fine German beers for hours without a little something to go along with it. So “traditional” food is brought out — sauerkraut, preztels, and sausage.

The mistake is in thinking that any sausage will do for Oktoberfest. Currywurst, bratwurst, kielbasa…

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

To be truly authentic, you have to serve weisswurst.

Weißwurst is one of those delicious accidents. In 1857, Munich butcher Sepp Moser was out of his usual sausage making supplies. Forced to improvise, he invented the distinctive boiled veal sausage with the pig skin shell.

Now, more than 75 million weisswursts are made each year, and Munich butchers take the quality of their product very seriously. A good weisswurst should be white, like snow (OK, almost…), and you should be able to see small flecks of green seasoning through the casing. Faded gray sausages are imitations, and usually poor quality.

You can get good weisswurst from quality butchers all over the world, or in specialty import shops. Truly authentic sausages have a special seal indicating that they were made in Munich.

To further impress your guests, be sure to serve them correctly. Weisswursts are served in pairs. They are traditionally accompanied by sweet (!) mustard with puffy pretzels.

The taste combination is one that really invokes the spirit of true Oktoberfest. Once the weisswursts are ready, all that you need is some good beer to go with it. Purists will insist on weissbeer, but as long as you are serving the right food to go with it, I’ll toast you with any one of Germany’s excellent Oktoberfest brews! ;-)

—Marcus