Such is my love and devotion to my husband that I spent this morning making the house smell like weird meat so that he could have goetta for breakfast on Monday.

What is goetta, you ask? That was my question as well when Shane and I first started dating and he would ask for it when we went out for breakfast. Wikipedia describes goetta as German peasant food. Like scrapple or hash, it’s meat, usually pork, cut with a filler to make it stretch out over more meals or servings. Goetta is made with pork and steel-cut oats, plus a variety of seasonings and occasionally beef.

Goetta is pretty hard to find outside Cincinnati – you can mail-order it from Glier’s, but otherwise you’re pretty much on your own.  We had a couple of pork chops in the fridge, and following an aha! moment earlier this week, I decided to try to make it at home, using a recipe from the Glier’s blog.

First, you simmer your pork for about an hour, thus cooking the meat and making a pork broth.  I didn’t take pictures of this step, so use your imagination.  Using your food processor or grinder, grind your now-cooked pork, an onion, some garlic, and other seasonings together.  Put all of this back in with the broth, then add steel-cut oats and stir until combined.  Are you imagining a weird porridge right now?  Because that’s what you’ve made.

Pour the weird porridge into a loaf pan or baking pan and bake for about 90 minutes at 350F. You’ll want to stir it a couple of times, which will also let you check to see if it has set. The final consistency should resemble meatloaf.

But you’re not finished yet!  To enjoy goetta as intended, take a portion, smash it down flat, and fry it up with some eggs, like so:

photo by yummiec00kies

Perhaps you have noted that I haven’t given you the actual recipe.  That’s because the goetta wasn’t very good.  I mean, it had the right look and consistency, but when Shane fried it up for breakfast, he said it needed a LOT more pork and seasoning.  So, a reasonable first attempt, but not a recipe we’ll be repeating.  Sorry, Betty Reisen.