Spicy Goetta

On Easter, Nick's cousin treated us to a breakfast of goetta and scrambled eggs.  We had never heard of goetta and were immediately smitten.  Tastes like sausage with the creamy mouth feel of oatmeal? And it can be made at home?!

After reviewing various online recipes, I approached the kitchen with the following thoughts:

1.  Despite the whole grain oats, goetta is not health food.  The whole point is using the oats to soak up the fat from the meat.

2. I'm going to start with a "half" batch.  Even if it freezes well, 1 lb of meat and 1 1/4 c. of steel cut oats is a *lot* of food for 2 people to eat, and first attempts are not always tasty.

3.  More spices!  When we have sausage with breakfast, it's Hot Italian Sausage, and so we wanted more spices in our homemade goetta.  Penzey's Italian sausage seasoning is salty, so I reduced the amount of salt I added to the oatmeal.

4.  I'm curious to find out how finely the meat will break up if I just stir it into the cooked oatmeal, but Nick lobbied for the extra flavor of browning the meat separately.

4.  Use a mix of ground beef and ground pork, mainly because that's how goetta was described to us.   Lots of the recipes call for only ground pork, or chunks of pork shoulder and a meat grinder.

So I assembled

8 oz. of ground pork

8 oz. of ground sirloin

1 1/4 c. steel cut oats

4 cups water

1 tsp salt

black pepper - 5 cranks of the mill

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 bay leaves

1 t dried savory

3/4 t Penzey's Italian sausage seasoning
3 shakes of red pepper flakes (optional)
Cooking spray

Season the water with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Stir in the oats, cover the pot, and reduce the temperature to low.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened and tender (40-50 minutes).

After about 25 minutes, heat a large skillet over medium high heat and add the pork and sirloin.  Break the meat up with spatula.  Then break it up some more.  Keep on chopping... you want the meat in the teensy, tiny crumbles you see in a cheap taco.  I used a Pampered Chef Mix 'N Chop, and pretty much chopped continuously until the meat was cooked through.  Keep cooking the meat, stirring occasionally, until it's a lovely shade of brown.  Stir in the chopped onion, bay leaves, savory, and Italian sausage seasoning, and cook until the onions are tender (4-5 minutes).  Turn off the burner under the skillet.

When your oatmeal is fully cooked, stir in the seasoned meat.  Continue to cook the mixture over low heat until it can be pulled away from the side of the pan when you stir.  Spray one or two loaf pans with cooking spray.  Spread the goetta in the loaf and and smooth it out with a butter knife or spatula.   Allow to cool on the counter for 30 minutes, and refrigerate overnight.

Loosen the goetta with a spatula, and turn it out onto a clean cutting board.  Cut ins slices a little more than 1/2 an inch thick.  Heat about 1 Tbsp of oil or butter (or some of both) in a frying pan, and fry the slices until crispy and brown on both sides.  Brownier and crispier than the picture below....the goetta looked so tasty that my camera "ate" the pictures I took before plating it.

I divided the goetta between two 8 inch x 4 inch loaf pans, and cut eat 8 inch loaf into 12 slices.

Our conclusion was that the recipe could still use a little more seasoning.  The next time I make it, I plan to add a clove or two of minced garlic and double the amounts of savory, Italian sausage seasoning, and black pepper.