German Potato Salad

One essential compliment to German dishes is Potato Salad.

German Potato Salad

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Serves: 4

Ingredients:

1 lb potatoes, cubed

4 slices bacon, cut into 1/2" pieces

1 large onion, finely chopped

1/4 cup white vinegar

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp German-style mustard

1 tsp salt

1/8 tsp ground black pepper

1 tbsp chopped parsley leaves

Cooking:

Boil potatoes in a pot, and boil for ten minutes in lightly salted water. Drain and set aside.

Place bacon in a large skillet and fry over medium heat until brown and crispy. Remove from the pan and set aside, leaving the bacon grease in the pan.

In the grease, fry the onion, and sautee until lightly browned. Add the vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. Bring up to heat, and then add the potatoes and parsley. Crumble in half of the bacon.

Remove from heat, and transfer to a serving pan, crumbling the other half of the bacon on top.

Rouladen

Rouladen is an odd German dish wherein you "roll" flank steak, pickles, and bacon together.

Be sure to simmer it, and marinading the flank steak beforehand won't hurt. Flank steak is a very tough cut of beef, frequently used for "stir fry beef" due to the cut being useful for the small strips common to Americhinese stir fry cooking.

Rouladen

Prep Time: 35 minutes

Cooking Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Serves: 4-6

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs flank steak, sliced into 1/4" filets, about 3" widegerman stone ground mustard

1/2 lb thick sliced bacon

2 large onions, sliced

1 16oz jar dill pickle slices

2 tbsp butter

2 1/2 cups water

1 cube beef bouillon

Preparation:

Spread mustard on the flank steaks. Place bacon, onion, and pickle slices on each filet, and roll. Use toothpicks, skewers, or cooking twine to bind the rolls together.

Cooking:

Over medium heat, melt the butter, and brown the rolls in the butter in a large saucepan.

Pour water and add the bouillon cube, and simmer for at least 1 hour. Serve with German potato salad.

Chocolate Covered Bacon

I have tasted things you might never believe, squishy, brainy snow fungus, rubbery pig's feet, or black chinese death eggs, and yet none of them really seems more bizarre than this: chocolate covered bacon.

I can imagine why people eat pig's feet, or even century eggs. Why anyone would ever dip cold precooked bacon into chocolate, however, is beyond me.

One might assume that since it's sold every year at the Indiana State Fair, that there's a reason. After all, sometimes unexpected things taste good. And perhaps the saltiness of the bacon would accompany the sweetness of the chocolate, as in chocolate covered pretzels.

You'd be wrong. Dead wrong. The first bite you have the distinct taste of chocolate, the next stringy, barely cooked bacon pouring acrid smoky aromas into your nostrils. Describing this as unpleasant doesn't do it justice, this experience was an abomination. Nowhere int he depths of the human conscious mind should this have been allowed to surface. Thankfully, the fair is only once a year, and the rest of the year we all don't take leave of our senses quite so readily.