Recipe Thursday - Adventures in Goetta

I had never heard of Goetta before but recently a conversation on Earthineer grabbed my interest. My first thought was... Are you kidding me? My second was... Why not? It's kinda like fried oatmeal but spicy, maybe Mountain Man will eat it. If you've read much of my writing lately you know I am trying to figure out a way to get him to eat oatmeal. At least I now have him at least nibbling on Granola and I've even gotten him to eat granola bars, (I'm not sharing that recipe yet. I just can't get it right!) but no way will he eat oatmeal. This however is a very different use of oats and even though I have never heard of it before I just couldn't pass up trying spicy and oats together.

Wikipedia describes Goetta (Pronounced gétt-aa, ged-da or get-uh) as: "a breakfast sausage of likely German-American origin that is popular in the greater Cincinnati area. It is primarily composed of ground meat (pork, or pork and beef) and steel-cut oats".

This recipe on Eathineer however, had no meat in it just the oats. Now, I have to say I have been told emphatically that unless Steel Cut Oats are used it is not Goetta. Sigh...  I have none on hand. Just my usual old fashioned rolled oats. But has that ever stopped me? Nope! And it isn't going to now! But in all fairness to the inventors of this wonderful little concoction please run out right now and purchase the best Steel Cut oats you can afford, preferably John MacCann's steel cut oats from Ireland. Umm....  can't do that myself since we are snowed in and have to "make do". Which is probably how Goetta was invented anyway! Someone having to "make do".

To make a long story short, I loved it and was pleasantly surprised when Mountain Man ate every bit of his the first day and three pieces the next. Yes! We have a winner! OK, so it's a fried food but at least he is eating his oatmeal!

The original recipe goes like this:

To begin, take four cups of steel-cut oats, place in a pot and cover with filtered or spring water to an inch or so over the top level of the oats. Check in an hour or so and add a bit more to ensure the oats are covered with water. They will soak up a LOT of water. Cover and leave overnight. Another option is to place it in a crockpot on low and let it sit for 4+ hours. 

The next morning, after making a strong pot of coffee, and maybe having a first breakfast of Irish porridge, add your ingredients. I added plenty of sausage seasoning, probably 4 tablespoons, and a dash of red pepper. This made for some strong, spicy goetta, which I like. 2 tablespoons should work just fine. Throw in a healthy dash of garlic powder, seasoning salt, and whatever else you have decided to add. I recommend not overdoing it for the first batch. You'll have a stronger feel for what you need to add, and can still season up the patties once you've cooked them. Although I could already form the goetta into patties, I went ahead and cut up a full stick of butter and stirred it into the heated crockpot to ensure the butter was melted and well distributed. This is also a good time to do some preliminary taste tasting. Next, slop it into some bread pans or Tupperware and cover. Although you could easily cook up your concoction now, I strongly suggest refrigerating (or freezing) it for a couple hours first.

But of course, I had to improvise!

Simple Oat Goetta, (sorta)
I made a 1/2 batch as I am running low on oats but you can easily double the recipe.

2 cups steel cut oats (or in my case rolled oats, with great apologies to the inventors)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper (I ended up using my coffee grinder and grinding up some dried chili peppers. Be careful if you do this! I must have sneezed for 10 mins as I ended up breathing some in!)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup butter

I measured my oats into a nice sized pot and covered with water, making sure I had enough for them to soak up all they wanted. Then I left it to sit on the very back of the wood stove where it is only slightly warm over night. Not sure if this was necessary but they turned out perfect by morning. If you add too much water don't worry about it. Just drain well in the morning.

Then I added all my spices. Sorry didn't take a picture of that step.

I melted the butter and added it to the mixture.

Spread it in a nice loaf pan. You can see I didn't have a big batch. Covered and placed it outside to cool and set. It didn't set up enough for me to slice but I just "cut" it with the spatula and added it to a nice hot pan and fried it up anyway. 

The smell of all those spices frying was fantastic.

All ready to eat! I actually fried it up for lunch with some eggs and toast. It was really good. 

Now that was my first experience with Goetta but I'm very sure it won't be my last. Next time I plan on making it a bit spicier and I will add about 1 lb of ground meat to it. Who needs so called convenience foods when you can make something like this? Apparently it is great in sandwiches and can be used as a side dish for many meals. A huge thank you to the Redheaded Yeti for introducing me to this treat. I promise to make it with the proper oats next time! (if I can find them)

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