Krautpfanne (German Cabbage and Sausage Skillet)

In Germany this is a butcher-counter dish: Mettenden, Debreziner, Krakauer or plain Rauchwurst, all smoked and already cooked, so they need nothing but browning. Fleischwurst and Cabanossi show up in published Krautpfanne recipes too and behave the same way. Outside Germany, Polish kielbasa is the closest thing on most shelves, because it is cured, smoked and renders the same kind of fat. Raw sausage is a different job: Bratwurst has to be fried through on its own before the cabbage goes in, and since it brings no smoke, add another half teaspoon of sweet paprika to make up for it.

Bayrisch Kraut is a side dish rather than a meal: shredded white cabbage braised in lard with onion and apple, seasoned with caraway, sugar and vinegar, loosened with beef stock and served next to roast pork, Schweinshaxe or sausages. It stays soft and mildly sweet-sour, and there is no sausage in the pot. Krautpfanne puts the sausage into the pan instead of beside it, uses far less liquid and finishes uncovered so the cabbage colours. Same vegetable, same caraway, different job: one fills the plate around the meat, the other is the plate.

Cabbage is mostly water and lets go of it the moment it meets heat. Two things stop it boiling in its own juice. Pan size first: 800 g of cabbage wants 30 cm of pan floor, and in a small pan it sits in a heap and steams whatever you do. The lid second: covered is right for the first 8 to 10 minutes, because the steam collapses the volume, but after that the lid comes off and the heat goes up so the moisture can evaporate. Salt early rather than late as well — it pulls the water out while there is still time to cook it away.

You can, and it is a normal German variation. Rinse the sauerkraut if it is very sour, squeeze it dry and give it about 10 minutes in the pan with the sausage; it needs no wilting stage and no vinegar at the end, since the acid is already there. Half fresh cabbage and half sauerkraut is the version I make most often. It still is not bigos. Polish bigos is a long stew of sauerkraut and fresh cabbage together with several meats at once, often pork, sausage and game, plus mushrooms, simmered for hours and reheated over several days to build its flavour. Krautpfanne is half an hour from cold pan to plate and tastes of three things.

At home in Germany it needs nothing but dark rye bread, medium-hot mustard and beer. Boiled potatoes with butter and parsley are the standard way to feed more people from the same pan. Small waxy potatoes, diced and added with the cabbage, also work, though the pan then needs the lid for a full 20 minutes and gives up some of its browning. Spaetzle or Schupfnudeln tipped in at the end turn it into a proper Bavarian one-pot. For a cold plate alongside, German potato salad with its warm vinegar and broth dressing is the pairing that belongs here; mayonnaise-based salads fight with the caraway.