Braunschweiger Leberwurst

The correction leads this one: in the US, “Braunschweiger” means a smoked, spreadable liver sausage. In Germany, Braunschweiger is a place adjective naming two completely different products — Braunschweiger Leberwurst (liver, cooked, spreadable, this recipe) and Braunschweiger Mettwurst (raw, fermented, no liver at all). Conflating them is the standard English-language error. This is the liver one: half pork liver, half jowl and fat, cured, cooked, cold-smoked, and spreadable as butter.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb)

• 1,135 g (2.5 lb) pork liver — 50%
• 1,135 g (2.5 lb) pork jowl / belly / fat trim — 50%

SEASONING (per kg → per 2,270 g)

• 41 g salt (1.8%)
• 5.7 g Cure #1 = 156 ppm on the 2,270 g meat block (2.5 g/kg) — the colour is why it reads as Braunschweiger
• 4.5 g black pepper
• 1.1 g nutmeg
• 1.1 g ground ginger
• 0.7 g cardamom
• 136 g onion, finely chopped
• Pork bungs, pork middles, or 65 mm cellulose casing

Directions

1. Key ingredients: this is the cooked, safe liver sausage — do not confuse it with raw Braunschweiger Mettwurst, which I’ve deliberately left out of this collection (see notes).
2. Scald the liver — do NOT cook it: 5 minutes in hot water, stirring, then cool in cold water and drain. This pulls the bitter blood and denatures just enough surface protein. Boiling the liver ruins the emulsion — cooked liver won’t emulsify and you get a grainy, chalky sausage.
3. Cook the fat/jowl separately until soft.
4. Grind both through 3 mm, then emulsify separately and combine. Liver is a powerful emulsifier — it’s doing the work the egg white does in a Bockwurst.
5. Stuff loosely into pork bungs, pork middles, or 65 mm cellulose.
6. Cook: 80 °C / 176 °F for 90 minutes to internal 70 °C / 160 °F.
7. Finish: cool 10 minutes in cold water, then air. Optional cold smoke 5–6 hours — that’s what makes it read as “Braunschweiger” to an American palate.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Marianski’s Braunschweiger (the liver one). Half liver, cured, smoked, pink, finely emulsified, spreads like butter. Its uncured Hausmacher cousin (30% liver, no cure) comes out gray-brown, not pink — which is actually correct for Hausmacher Leberwurst and worth saying, because people read gray as spoiled. The pink here is entirely the Cure #1.

The correction that leads. German Braunschweiger names two unrelated products: this cooked liver sausage, and Braunschweiger Mettwurst — raw, fermented, cold-smoked, no liver. Marianski indexes them separately, which is how the confusion gets caught. Anyone selling you “Braunschweiger” as one thing is flattening two.

Why the raw Mett/Teewurst family isn’t in this collection. Their published home formulas carry no starter culture, no pH target, and no verification step — they rely on spontaneous fermentation, which is not adequate now. This exact product (mettwurst) killed a four-year-old in the 1995 Garibaldi E. coli O111 outbreak in South Australia, at an infectious dose calculated as low as one organism per 10 g. Nitrite is a botulism control, not an E. coli control. So the honest call is: buy those, don’t make them. This cooked liver Braunschweiger is a different, safe animal.

Still open. The Berliner and Hausmacher Leberwurst variants, not yet worked up in full.