Choucroute garnie: what it is, what to order and what to avoid

Overview

Choucroute garnie is two things on one plate. Underneath is the choucroute itself: white cabbage, finely shredded, salted and left to ferment for weeks until it turns pale, sour and slightly translucent. On top is the garniture, the reason for the word garnie: sausages, smoked and salted pork, and boiled potatoes, all of which have spent the last hour or two in the same pot, so that the fat and smoke of the meat have soaked into the cabbage and the cabbage’s acidity has cut the meat.

That is the point of the dish and the way to judge it. Properly cooked, the cabbage is not sharp. It has been braised slowly in white wine, usually Riesling or Sylvaner, with onion, pork or goose fat and juniper berries, and it comes out soft, mellow and faintly sweet, with the sourness in the background. A choucroute that makes you wince is one that was not cooked long enough.

It is not Strasbourg’s own in the way a city’s single invention is. It belongs to the whole of Alsace, and sauerkraut with pork is eaten across the German-speaking world. The name gives the history away: choucroute is a French rendering of the Alsatian sürkrüt, sour cabbage, bent towards the French chou so it sounded like a native word. What Strasbourg has is proximity and one ingredient with its name on it. The cabbage fields of the plain just south-west of the city, around Krautergersheim, are the heart of the growing area, and since 2018 the fermented cabbage has carried a European Union protected geographical indication, Choucroute d’Alsace IGP. It covers the cabbage and how it is made, not the finished plate, and not any restaurant. The other claim is the sausage: the slim, smoked pork saucisse de Strasbourg, known locally as a knack, which is on almost every choucroute in the city.

What to order

On a menu the plain word choucroute nearly always means the garnished version; nobody serves the cabbage alone as a main course. What changes from plate to plate is the meat, and it helps to know what you are looking at:

• knack — the Strasbourg sausage, thin, pink, smoked, and named for the snap its skin makes when you bite it. It is heated through gently with the cabbage, not split and grilled.
• saucisse de Montbéliard — a coarser, heavily smoked sausage from the neighboring region, often the second sausage on the plate.
• palette — smoked pork shoulder, usually the largest piece, carved in thick slices.
• lard fumé and lard salé — smoked and salted pork belly, which give the cabbage most of its flavor.
• Kassler — cured, smoked pork loin, leaner than the rest.
• jarret or wädele — a whole pork knuckle, sometimes offered as a heavier version for those who want one.

A standard plate has four or five of these. A choucroute royale usually means the cabbage has been finished with sparkling wine, crémant or Champagne, instead of still wine, and it tends to come with a more generous garnish; the menu should say what it means by it.

The choucroute de la mer is a different dish that happens to share the cabbage: the pork is replaced by fish and shellfish, usually with a butter sauce. It is a modern restaurant creation rather than a farmhouse one, and it is a reasonable order if pork is not an option, but it is not what the word means on its own.

Two things to ask for at the table. Moutarde, mustard, if it is not already there; it is eaten with the meat, not stirred into the cabbage. And the drink: a carafe of Sylvaner or Riesling is the traditional match, and beer is every bit as correct, since this is a brewing region as well as a wine one.

The thing that marks a visitor out is the portion. A full choucroute garnie is a meal for a cold day and a long afternoon. Some places offer a lighter version, often on the lunch menu, and it is worth asking; ordering a starter as well is usually a mistake.

What to avoid

The dish is easy to fake because its cabbage is sold ready-fermented everywhere, in jars, tins and vacuum bags, and an imitation is just that cabbage warmed beside some sausages. The difference is the time in the pot, and it shows.

Look at the color of the cabbage. Long braising turns it ivory to pale gold and gives it a gloss of fat. Cabbage that is still bright, wet and stringy, sitting in a pool of thin liquid, has been heated rather than cooked, and it will taste of the jar.

Look at how the meat sits. In a real choucroute the pork and sausages have cooked with the cabbage. Sausages that arrive split lengthways and charred from a grill, laid on top of a heap of cabbage, have met it only on the plate. The same goes for bright red frankfurters standing in for the knack.

At the Christmas market, choucroute is served in disposable trays from big pans kept hot on the stall. As a warm snack in the cold it is honest enough; as a version of the dish it is the weakest you will find, and not a reason to skip a sit-down one.

Be wary of a menu that offers choucroute alongside pizza, burgers and paella on the same card. A kitchen that does everything has rarely given this dish the hours it needs. A short menu built around Alsatian dishes, where choucroute shares space with baeckeoffe and little else, is a better sign than any decoration.

Practicalities

A winstub is the Alsatian wine tavern: wood panelling, a short menu of regional dishes, wine by the carafe. It is where to eat this. In the historic center a choucroute garnie in one, or in a traditional brasserie, is typically around €18 to €28, and a royale or a choucroute de la mer more; a plate of the day at an ordinary local restaurant can be well under that. When comparing prices, look at what is on the plate: it is the smoked shoulder and belly that cost the kitchen money and carry the flavor. On winter weekends and in December, book the evening table.

This is cold-weather food, and the calendar follows the cabbage. The new season’s choucroute, from that year’s harvest, starts appearing in the autumn, and from then through the winter it is on almost every traditional menu. In high summer it is still on the menus, but it is a heavy plate for a hot day.

It is a lunch dish as much as a dinner one, and arguably more so, given how much there is of it. Traditional kitchens close between services, so a choucroute is something to plan for at lunch or in the evening, not to find at four in the afternoon.

To take some home, pork butchers and market stalls sell raw fermented choucroute by weight, along with the smoked meats to go with it. The cabbage keeps for days in the fridge, and it is one of the few dishes that most people agree is better reheated the day after it is first cooked.