TF's family is from New England and a lot of her family still lives in Pennsylvania. Thanks to this, I discovered scrapple. Scrapple is a mix of ground pork and often some organ meats cooked with cornmeal and spices. It's then formed into a loaf, sliced, and fried for breakfast. It's apparently a "Pennsylvania Dutch" thing and you can't get it outside of Pennsylvania and a few of the surrounding states.

When I stumbled across a recipe for goetta, I was getting similar vibes. It's a mix of ground meats (usually pork and beef) cooked with oats and spices, formed into loaves, sliced, and fried for breakfast. Sounds similar, right?! And it is also a German-American dish. It just stems from a different region. As far as I can tell, this particular grain sausage loaf originates in Ohio rather than Pennsylvania, but the idea is very similar.

There are many different goetta recipes. Most seem to lean toward a 50-50 mix of ground pork and ground beef, but some use more of one or the other. I even ran across a few recipes that use sausage (already seasoned) and then add additional salt and seasonings to the mix. I felt like this might make it too salty and fatty, so I stuck to using unseasoned ground meat.

The seasonings also varied widely. Bay leaves, marjoram, black pepper, and white pepper seemed to be common to most of the recipes, but things diverged widely from there. Some included things like cloves, ginger, nutmeg, or mace. Others had coriander, allspice, sage, or thyme. And most recipes seemed to have at least a few people saying the seasonings were spot on while others said that the sausage was delicious but not at all authentic-tasting. I'm assuming this is just a case of regional variations and different people being used to different flavour profiles.

I read through a few different recipes, took note of the different seasonings and instructions, and then came up with my own based on what I thought sounded good. This seems like a fairly flexible recipe though. I'm sure you could play around with the exact ratios and seasonings to suit you own tastes or what you have on hand.

Goetta

Adapted from Daring Gourmet (and a few other sources)

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 c. steel-cut oats
• 4-6 c. beef stock¹
• 2-4 c. water
• up to 2 tsp. coarse sea salt²
• 3 dried bay leaves
• 1/2 Tbsp. dried marjoram
• 450g lean ground beef
• 500-700g ground pork³
• 1 onion, chopped
• 5-6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp. black peppercorns, ground
• 1 tsp. white peppercorns, ground
• 1 tsp. coriander, ground
• 1/2 tsp. dried sage
• 1/2 tsp. allspice berries, ground

Directions

1. Combine the oats, stock, water, bay leaves, and marjoram and bring to a boil.
2. Reduce heat to low and cook, covered, for 30-60 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add beef, pork, onion, garlic, black pepper, white pepper, coriander, sage, and allspice, bring to a boil, cover, and cook for another 1-2 hours, stirring occasionally.
4. Taste and adjust seasoning as desired.
5. Line two 9"x5" loaf pans with foil.
6. Divide the goetta mixture between the two prepared pans and chill for at least 4 hours and as long as overnight.
7. The next day, unmold the goetta and cut it into 1-1.5cm thick slices.
8. At this point it can either be fried (preferably in bacon grease) or frozen for future enjoyment.
9. Don't overcrowd the pan or move the goetta around too much while frying it or it may fall apart.
10. Serve with eggs, toast, and whatever other breakfast foods you desire.

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¹ I used homemade chicken stock instead of beef stock. The original recipe called for 4 c. broth + 4 c. water, but I ended up with about 6 c. of stock, so I used all of it and then added water to bring it up to a total of 8 c. of liquid. I was quite happy with how this worked out. ^Back
2 The original recipe calls for 1 Tbsp. of salt. I thought this sounded like way too much. I put in 2 tsp. because I was using homemade stock that had very little salt in it. If using commercial stock/broth, I would likely omit the salt entirely. Once the mixture is cooked, you can taste it before putting it in the molds and add more salt if needed. ^Back
3 All the recipes I found called for 900g of meat for 2 1/2 c. of oats. However, I had a 450g package of beef and a 700g package of pork. I didn't want to try to save and find a use for 250g of pork, so I just put all of it in. I doubt the little bit of extra pork made much of a difference and it saved me dealing with leftover raw meat. ^Back