Pinkel
Type of German sausage
Pinkel is a smoked Kaszanka (German: Grützwurst), which is a type of sausage. It is eaten mainly in northwest Germany, especially the region around Oldenburg, Bremen and Osnabrück as well as in East Frisia and Friesland.
01Etymology
The word pinkel is East Frisian. The sausage name is thought to derive from pinkelt, meaning "little finger". Alternatively, the name could refer to the homonymous verb which means "to drip", referring to the manner in which fat drips from the sausage during smoking.
02Ingredients and uses
Pinkel consists mainly of bacon, groats of oats or barley, beef suet, pig lard, onions, salt, pepper and other spices. The exact composition of the recipe is guarded by butchers as a trade secret and therefore varies from village to village. Pinkel with a high meat content is also described as Fleisch-Pinkel ("meat pinkel") or Oldenburger Pinkel. Pinkel is traditionally filled into the edible small intestines of pigs, although today edible artificial casings are also used.
Pinkel is often eaten with kale (Grünkohl) as the dish Grünkohl mit Pinkel ("kale and pinkel"), which is a kale stew with pork belly and other sausages added to it. According to tradition, Germans would celebrate winter by taking Kohl-und-Pinkel-Touren ("kale and pinkel trips") or Grünkohlfahrt ("kale trips"), consisting of a hike followed by a meal of Grünkohl mit Pinkel and Schnaps.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Pinkel”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Gruenkohl mit Pinkel.jpg by Pujanak, Public domain
- Gruenkohlgericht.jpg by Wilfried Wittkowsky, CC BY-SA 3.0
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