Get into Goetta

Shortly after I got my sausage making attachment, my friend Mooch, who's from Cincinnati, asked me if I ever made goetta.  I told him that I'd never heard of it and if he didn't stop making things up, I would give all of his socks to the homeless in the neighborhood.  Once Mooch said, "It's really good," I was out of there and on my way home in the Celebrity already looking for sock candidates.

Not being one who enjoys a tale being spun straight to his face, I understandably got back home still enraged.  The Skipper rage, as always, was short-lived, and I was made the fool once I looked up goetta (pronounced "gedda") and found that it is indeed real.  It's only massed produced and distributed around Cincinnati in the form of packaged tubes or stuffed sausages.  There are even vending machines that you can buy it out of.  Maybe that's just for Goettafest though.

Apparently, ze Germans brought it with them when they settled in the Cincinnati area, and it was a way to stretch meat.  It ends up looking like scrapple, but it doesn't have the pork scraps or corn meal, rather it's mostly steel-cut oats and ground meat.  I've just been calling it Cincinnati meatloaf when people ask me what it is, which is dumb because I have to explain what that is.  

In a gesture of redress, as well as in recognition for his upcoming 40th birthday, I made a batch for Mooch distilled from the very few recipes available online.

1 lb ground beef

1 lb ground pork

1 tbs thyme

1 tbs sage

1 tbs rosemary

1 chopped onion

4 clv garlic

5 c steel-cut oats
3 qt water (filtered if you got it, brah)

Brown meat with the herbs and s/p.

Add onions and garlic.

Add oats.

 Toss oats in meat mixture to coat and heat until oats begin popping

Forgetting to take more photos, I dumped the oat/meat mixture into the pot of boiling water and let it simmer down for two hours while stirring it about every 15 minutes as to not scorch the bottom oats.  After two hours pour the mixture into loaf pans and allow to cool before chilling in the refrigerator for an hour.  After the goetta is set, plop the loaf out and slice.

It's traditionally fried in bacon grease and eaten for breakfast, but it grilled up nicely last weekend.  I don't like to burn myself out on food by eating it every day, so I sliced it, wrapped it in foil, and froze it to eat at my leisure.

End product

Just reading the ingredients list makes it seem pretty bland, but it has a great hearty taste and texture.  The outside fries/grills up crispy while the inside remains very moist with a texture that I can only describe as slightly overcooked oatmeal with the individual oats occasionally popping in your mouth similar to the way barley does.  It's fine as is, but I have it with whatever random hot sauce I grab off the shelf.