Name: Bratwurst “Hot Tub”
Yield: Serves 4 to 6
Cuisine: United States
Ingredients: 12 uncooked Wisconsin bratwursts (about 3 pounds); 1 large sweet onion, cut crosswise into ½-inch slices; Coarse salt (kosher or sea) and freshly ground black pepper; 4 tablespoons (½ stick) salted butter, plus more butter for the rolls (optional); 2 bottles beer (24 ounces), preferably from Wisconsin; 12 crusty rolls, such as semmel rolls or kaiser rolls; Hot or sweet German-style mustard; 3 cups sauerkraut (optional), at room temperature

Preparation info

Serves
4 to 6

Difficulty
Complex

Appears in

Planet Barbecue

By Steven Raichlen

Published 2010

About

The bratwurst came to Wisconsin with German and Austrian immigrants in the late 1800s. It became synonymous with the state’s culture in the 1940s, when an Austrian-born butcher named Ralph Stayer created the Johnsonville bratwurst, named for a village west of Sheboygan. (The village was named after Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth president of the United States.) Stayer’s genius lay as much in branding and marketing his brats, as bratwurst are affectionately known in these parts, as in formu