7 Badass Bavarian Foods You Must Try
Bavarian food doesn’t f#ck around.
Bavarian food is the guy at the gym in the tiny muscle tee who’s lifting weights so heavy, the veins in his neck and head (and other parts of the body that you didn’t even know HAD veins) start to pop out.
Bavaria‘s cuisine is a monster truck. It crumples the delicate-by-comparison culinary offerings of Spain, Italy, and France like tiny little Fiats and Peugots in its path.
Do you want to eat Bavarian food? OF COURSE YOU DO. It is rich and doughy and filling and is the only thing on the planet that can soak up German beer. Every other fare will simply hide in the corner of your stomach, petrified at the sheer awesomeness of the brew that resides in there with it, and it will never get digested.
In short: if you don’t eat Bavarian food while in Germany, you could die. Here are some of my favorites. They will turn your tastebuds into receptors of SHEER ECSTASY.
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Pretzels
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Have you ever had an enormous pretzel? I’m not talking about the ones you get at the mall or the movie theater, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Those aren’t pretzels. Those are doughnuts that took a yoga class.
Real Bavarian pretzels are hearty, doughy twists of bravado, studded with salt. They are meals unto themselves. They are not served in delicate little paper sleeves. They are handed over in giant wooden baskets along with a few steins of beer and a grunt. Tear into one with your bare teeth and suddenly, you will be able to speak German. Try it.
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Weisswurst
Bavarians are so badass, they eat sausage for breakfast. And I don’t mean those little tiny breakfast sausages that we get here in the states. No. They go for these:
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That is a weisswurst (literally, “white sausage”) – made from ground up pork veal and bacon. There are many smart-ass remarks to be made here, but since I am a lady, I will leave them up to you. (Okay, fine, here’s one: “GERMANS DO IT WITH BIGGER SAUSAGES.”)
You pair them with the aforementioned pretzel, and maybe a dab of sweet mustard.
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And then you run outside and pull a plow across a field in the middle of winter because THIS IS the breakfast of champions, no matter what Wheaties tries to claim.
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Schweinshaxe
The Germans have a dish called schweinshaxe that is particularly popular in Bavaria. It is a roasted pig knuckle, and it will punch you in the mouth with its gastronomical awesomeness.
And yes, it often comes to the table with a knife sticking out of it.
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The still-attached skin on the outside of the schweinshaxe becomes a crackly and delicious pork rind, while the meat becomes fall-off-the-bone tender. It comes with a enormous potato dumpling, which probably weighs somewhere between 5-10 pounds.
Don’t ignore the dumpling. It will help you to soak up the delicious pork juice that has filled the bottom of your plate. It is nectar of the gods. Drink it, and you will LIVE FOREVER. Probably.
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Schnitzel
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Germans can schnitzel the hell out of anything. First, they take a slab of meat and hammer it flat.
That’s right: they are so damn badass, they beat their food after it’s dead.
Then they batter dip and fry it up, because if there’s one thing that makes hammered meat even better, it’s a crisp, golden crust.
I mean, it’s like fried chicken – which is already one of the greatest things in the world – with an EVEN BETTER MEAT (usually veal, sometimes pork). You can ask for no more out of life.
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Spaetzle
Noodles are wimpy. You can’t feed a noodle to a German, because if you do you run the risk that they will scream at you IN GERMAN and it will be the most terrifying thing you have EVER encountered.
Instead of noodles, they have spaetzle, which are little chewy dumplings of HELL YES. They are often served with cheese and fried shallots on top, and if you are very lucky you can even get them with bacon.
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But perhaps you should just stay away, because they will ruin you. The next time you have mac n’ cheese, you may find yourself screaming at how pathetic they are in compared to spaetzle.
“NEIN!” you will holler at the top of your lungs. “Ich möchte Spätzle!” (Which in and of itself will be amazing, because you didn’t realize you spoke German. THANK YOU, PRETZEL.)
And everyone who hears you will run in fear, taking their weakling noodles with them.
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Sauerkraut
You know who are badasses? Pirates. Pirates are totally badass.
But even pirates can’t stand up to scurvy. You know what can? Sauerkraut.
WHICH MEANS SAUERKRAUT > PIRATES.
I hated this stuff as a kid, but that’s because I had only known what we have in the states – a nasty, soggy, shredded concoction that is plopped on top of hot dogs. But German sauerkraut laughs at that impostor-sauerkraut’s face.
It is vinegary and salty and crisp, studded with rye seeds. Eat it, and your immune system will become the Hulk. This is why German people live to an average age of 165, and why their children wrestle bears at summer camp.
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Kuchen
And this is just the cake that they had at Starbucks. IMAGINE WHAT BAKERIES HAVE TO OFFER.
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In recent years, there’s been a culinary trend toward itsy-bitsy, tiny little hand-crafted desserts. I say screw that. So does much of the country of Germany. Cakes in this part of the world are ginormous.
It doesn’t matter what kind you get: order a slice, and be prepared for a piece of cake the size of a child’s head. Two servers are required to carry it out, and it will contain enough sugar to put an elephant into a diabetic coma. Don’t ask a friend to split it with you – that’s the coward’s way out.
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That’s it. My favorite Bavarian (/German) foods. If you eat them, you will grow hair on your chest and you will never need to call a tow truck because if your car breaks down you will be able to PUSH IT HOME. Gender equality being what it is, I’d say that’s a pretty desirable outcome for any man or woman.
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