Choucroute Garnie à l'Alsacienne (Alsatian Garnished Sauerkraut)

// SUPPLY LIST

// OPERATIONS

1. 1 The day before, put the salted pork hock in a large bowl, cover with at least 2 litres of cold water and refrigerate for 12 hours, changing the water twice. This is the one step you cannot skip: salt-cured pork cooked alongside already-salty kraut makes the whole pot inedible, and there is no way to pull salt back out later. Both sausages and the smoked belly go in exactly as bought, but taste a shaving of the smoked palette raw — many are salt-cured before they are smoked, and if it tastes fiercely salty rather than just smoky, give it 2 hours in cold water alongside the hock.
2. 2 Taste a strand of the raw sauerkraut so you know what you are starting with. Tip it into a colander, run cold water through it for about 20 seconds while turning it with your hands, then lift it out in handfuls and squeeze firmly — it should stay damp like a wrung-out cloth, never bone dry. Tease each handful into loose strands as you drop it into a bowl; kraut that goes into the pot in clumps cooks unevenly and stays raw and squeaky in the middle. Rinse a second time only if the first taste made your jaw ache, and never blanch or boil it as some books advise — that strips out the lactic tang, which is the entire point of the dish. If pasteurised jarred sauerkraut is all you can get, drain it well and skip the rinse altogether; it is already milder.
3. 3 Make a nouet: cut a 20 cm square of muslin, pile the juniper, peppercorns, coriander seeds, caraway, bay leaves and cloves into the middle, gather the corners and tie tightly with kitchen string. Loose spices look rustic but a juniper berry or a whole clove bitten by a guest is a genuinely unpleasant mouthful, and the bag lets you lift the seasoning out at the end.
4. 4 Heat the oven to 150°C / 300°F. Melt the goose fat in a cast-iron or enamelled casserole 28-30 cm across and at least 8 litres in capacity, set over medium-low heat. Add the sliced onions with a small pinch of salt and cook for 10-12 minutes, stirring often, until they are translucent, slack and glossy with no colour at all. Do not let them catch or brown: the caramel sweetness that browning creates fights the acidity of the kraut and pushes the finished dish towards something that tastes reheated and sugary.
5. 5 Spread half the sauerkraut over the onions in an even layer. Bury the drained hock, the smoked palette and the smoked belly (skin side up) in it, along with the crushed garlic and the spice bag, then cover with the remaining kraut and press it down lightly with your palms. Pour in the Riesling and the stock — the liquid should come about two thirds of the way up the kraut and no higher, because this is a braise, not a boil, and the kraut and the meat will both give up more as they go. Use a dry Alsace Riesling or a Sylvaner: Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris are too perfumed and faintly sweet, and they turn the whole pot cloying by the second hour.
6. 6 Bring the pot to a bare simmer over medium heat — the first small bubbles breaking at the edge, which takes 15-20 minutes for a full pot with cold meat in it. Do this on the hob rather than letting the oven do it, or the middle of the pot creeps up through the tepid range for the best part of an hour with cured pork sitting in it. Lay a round of baking parchment directly on the surface of the kraut, fit the lid and transfer to the oven. Cook undisturbed for 2 hours.
7. 7 Uncover and check. The kraut should have turned from white to pale straw-gold, smell sweetly sour rather than sharp, and a strand should be tender with only a whisper of bite left; a skewer pushed into the palette should meet mild, even resistance, and the hock meat should have begun to shrink back from the bone. If either is still firm at the centre, put the lid back on and give it another 20-30 minutes before going on — a bone-in hock pulled early shreds into dry strings instead of coming off in large moist pieces. If the edges of the pot look dry, pour in 100 ml of hot water and stir it through; kraut left to fry in fat goes stringy and bitter, and that flavour never leaves.
8. 8 Lay the Montbéliard sausages whole on the surface of the kraut, cover and return to the oven for 30 minutes, until they are plump and taut and a skewer pushed into the centre of one comes out hot against the back of your hand. Do not prick them: the skin is what keeps the fat and the smoke inside, and a pricked Montbéliard leaks into the pot and comes out dry and crumbly.
9. 9 While the sausages heat through, cook the potatoes separately. Put them in a 3 litre pan, cover with cold water by 3 cm, add 1 tsp fine salt, bring to the boil over high heat, then drop to a steady simmer for 20-25 minutes, until the point of a knife slides into the centre of the largest with no resistance at all; drain and keep them warm in the covered pan. Do not be tempted to bury them in the kraut instead — the acid in the sauerkraut stops their pectin breaking down, and they come to the table with a chalky raw core after a time that would have cooked them through in plain water.
10. 10 Take the pot out of the oven and push the Strasbourg sausages down into the hot kraut so they are fully covered, replace the lid and leave to stand off the heat for 10 minutes. They are already cooked and only need heating through — anything approaching a simmer, above roughly 80°C / 175°F, splits their thin skins and empties them into the kraut.
11. 11 Transfer all the meats to a warmed board or dish and cover loosely with foil while you finish the kraut. Fish out the spice bag and squeeze it against the side of the pot, stir the kirsch through the sauerkraut, then taste: with three cured meats in the pot it will almost never need salt, but it usually wants a good grinding of coarse black pepper. If there is more than a few spoonfuls of liquid left, set the uncovered pot over medium heat for 3-5 minutes to drive it off — choucroute should glisten, not swim.
12. 12 Carve the palette across the grain into slices about 1 cm thick, cut the smoked belly into batons about 1.5 cm wide, halve each Montbéliard on the diagonal so there is a piece for every plate, and pull the hock meat off the bone in large pieces, discarding the skin and any hard fat. Mound the kraut down the centre of a large warmed platter, lay the sliced meats over it, and arrange the sausages and potatoes around the edge; spoon 3-4 tablespoons of the cooking juices over the top. Serve on properly hot plates — goose fat sets the instant it meets a cold one — with a pot of strong Alsace mustard on the table and the rest of the Riesling, well chilled, or a cold blond Alsatian beer.
13. 13 Choucroute reheats well and many Alsatian cooks think it is better on the second day. Cool it uncovered until it has stopped steaming, then refrigerate the kraut and the meats together for up to 3 days and reheat gently, covered, at 150°C / 300°F for 40 minutes with a splash of water; add the knacks only in the last 10 minutes, off the heat, or they will split.

// CLASSIFICATIONS