Bayerische Küche · The Bavarian Table

Bavarian Cooking Without Vegetable Oil

Pull up a bench in the old Wirtshaus, where the roast crackles under a spoonful of lard, trout turns golden in nothing but foaming butter, and the Spätzle are drowned in mountain cheese. Plain ingredients, patient hands, deep flavour.

Explore the Recipes
Butter ✦ Butterschmalz ✦ Pork Lard
An elegantly plated Bavarian dish on a dark table
✦ Schweinsbraten
From the recipe collection
Butter

Butter First

The dairies below the Alps have always given heavy, yellow butter. Every roast, sauce and dumpling here starts in it, never in a refined seed oil.

Schmalz

Lard And Butterschmalz

Rendered pork lard and clarified Butterschmalz carry heat the way no seed oil can. They give the crackling its snap and the potatoes their crust, exactly as the Wirtshaus kitchens intended.

Niemals

Never Seed Oil

No sunflower, no rapeseed, no shortcuts. Only the fats that Bavarian tables trusted long before the supermarket aisle existed.

✦
From Our Kitchen

Bavarian Recipes

Six dishes from the beer gardens and farmhouse kitchens of the Bavarian south, each cooked in the honest fats that make them taste like they should.

Oberbayern A Bavarian roast pork with dark crackling resting on a wooden board

Schweinsbraten

Roast pork with crackling, cooked in lard

2 hr 45 min·6 servings·Medium

The Sunday roast of Upper Bavaria. Pork shoulder scored deep, rubbed with caraway and garlic, and started in pork lard so the skin blisters into proper crackling while the meat below stays soft.

Ingredients

  • 1.8 kg pork shoulder with the rind on
  • 2 tbsp pork lard
  • 2 tsp caraway seeds, lightly crushed
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • Coarse salt and black pepper
  • 2 onions, quartered
  • 2 carrots, cut in chunks
  • 1 small celeriac, cut in chunks
  • 500 ml dark beer
  • 300 ml beef stock

Instructions

  1. Score the rind in a diamond pattern, cutting through the fat but not into the meat. Rub the whole joint with salt, pepper, caraway and garlic, then leave it at room temperature for an hour.
  2. Melt the lard in a heavy roasting tin on the hob. Lay the pork rind side down and let it colour for 8 minutes without moving it.
  3. Turn the joint rind side up, scatter the onions, carrots and celeriac around it, and pour in the stock. Roast at 160C for 2 hours, basting every 30 minutes.
  4. Pour the beer over the rind in three goes during the last 40 minutes, raising the oven to 220C for the final 20 so the crackling puffs and snaps.
  5. Rest the roast for 15 minutes. Strain the pan juices, skim the fat, and reduce the gravy until it coats a spoon.
  6. Carve thickly, spoon the gravy over the meat, and serve with dumplings and blue cabbage.
Chiemsee A whole trout in a pan with browned butter, lemon and parsley

Forelle Müllerin

Whole trout in foaming brown butter

25 min·2 servings·Easy

Lake trout dredged in rye flour and cooked in nothing but butter until the skin turns crisp and the butter smells of hazelnuts. The whole dish takes less time than laying the table.

Ingredients

  • 2 whole trout, cleaned and patted very dry
  • 4 tbsp rye or plain flour
  • Salt and white pepper
  • 80 g butter
  • 1 tbsp Butterschmalz
  • 1 lemon, half juiced and half in wedges
  • A handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
  • 2 tbsp flaked almonds (optional)

Instructions

  1. Season the trout inside and out, then turn them through the flour and shake off everything loose.
  2. Heat the Butterschmalz in a wide pan until it shimmers. Lay the trout in and leave them for 4 minutes without touching them.
  3. Turn carefully with two spatulas and give the second side 4 minutes more.
  4. Lift the fish onto warm plates. Wipe the pan, add the butter and let it foam and turn golden brown, about 90 seconds.
  5. Throw in the almonds if using, then the lemon juice and parsley, and swirl once.
  6. Pour the brown butter over the trout and serve at once with lemon wedges and boiled potatoes.
Allgäu A pan of cheese spaetzle topped with deep golden fried onions

Käsespätzle

Egg noodles layered with mountain cheese and butter onions

50 min·4 servings·Medium

The Alpine answer to comfort food. Soft egg noodles scraped straight into boiling water, then layered with Bergkäse and buried under onions cooked slowly in butter until they are dark and sweet.

Ingredients

  • 400 g plain flour
  • 4 eggs
  • 200 ml sparkling water
  • 1 tsp salt
  • A grating of nutmeg
  • 3 large onions, thinly sliced
  • 90 g butter
  • 250 g Bergkäse or Emmental, coarsely grated
  • Black pepper
  • Chives to finish

Instructions

  1. Beat the flour, eggs, water, salt and nutmeg into a thick batter and slap it against the bowl with a spoon until it blisters. Rest it for 20 minutes.
  2. Melt 60 g of the butter in a wide pan and cook the onions over low heat for 25 minutes, stirring often, until deep golden and sweet.
  3. Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil. Press the batter through a Spätzle press or scrape it in strips off a wet board.
  4. Lift the noodles out as they float, about 2 minutes, and drain them well.
  5. Layer noodles and cheese in a buttered dish, finishing with cheese, and let it melt in a 180C oven for 8 minutes.
  6. Crown with the butter onions, plenty of pepper and chives, and serve straight from the dish.
München A clear beef broth with a large dumpling and chives in a white bowl

Leberknödelsuppe

Liver dumpling soup in clear beef broth

1 hr 15 min·4 servings·Medium

The bowl that opens almost every Bavarian meal. One generous dumpling, bound with stale rolls and butter onions, floating in a broth clear enough to read through.

Ingredients

  • 4 stale bread rolls, cut into small cubes
  • 200 ml warm milk
  • 250 g beef liver, finely minced
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 30 g butter
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tbsp chopped parsley
  • 1 tsp marjoram
  • Salt, pepper and nutmeg
  • 1.5 litres clear beef broth
  • Chives to finish

Instructions

  1. Pour the warm milk over the bread cubes and leave them 20 minutes, then squeeze out the excess.
  2. Cook the onion gently in the butter until soft and pale gold, then cool it.
  3. Mix the bread, liver, onion, egg, parsley, marjoram and seasoning into a dough that just holds together. Rest it 15 minutes.
  4. Wet your hands and shape four large dumplings.
  5. Bring the broth to a bare simmer and lower the dumplings in. Poach them for 20 minutes without letting the broth boil.
  6. Serve one dumpling per bowl with plenty of broth and a heavy shower of chives.
Bäckerei A dark round farmhouse loaf with a floured crust on a wooden table

Bauernbrot

Sourdough farmhouse loaf brushed with butter

5 hr·1 large loaf·Advanced

The dark rye and wheat loaf that sits on every farmhouse table. Long, slow and unhurried, with a crust brushed in butter the moment it leaves the oven.

Ingredients

  • 300 g rye flour
  • 400 g strong wheat flour
  • 150 g active rye sourdough starter
  • 480 ml warm water
  • 16 g salt
  • 1 tsp caraway seeds
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
  • 20 g butter, melted, for the crust

Instructions

  1. Mix the flours, starter and water into a shaggy dough and leave it covered for 40 minutes.
  2. Work in the salt, caraway and coriander, then fold the dough over itself four times at 30 minute intervals.
  3. Let it rise until it has grown by half, around 3 hours depending on the kitchen.
  4. Shape into a tight round, dust heavily with rye flour and prove seam side up in a floured basket for 60 minutes.
  5. Turn out onto a hot stone or heavy tray and bake at 240C with steam for 15 minutes, then 200C for 40 minutes more.
  6. Brush the crust with melted butter while still hot and cool it fully on a rack before cutting.
Nachspeise A dusted apple strudel sliced open on parchment paper

Apfelstrudel

Apple strudel in a butter brushed pastry

1 hr 30 min·8 slices·Advanced

Pastry stretched so thin across the table that you could read a newspaper through it, then brushed with butter, filled with apples and cinnamon, and rolled up the long way.

Ingredients

  • 250 g strong flour
  • 1 egg
  • 120 ml lukewarm water
  • 1 tbsp melted butter, plus 120 g for brushing
  • A pinch of salt
  • 1 kg tart apples, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 100 g sugar
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 80 g raisins soaked in rum
  • 80 g breadcrumbs
  • Icing sugar to finish

Instructions

  1. Work the flour, egg, water, melted butter and salt into a smooth elastic dough. Oil the surface lightly with butter, cover, and rest it for 45 minutes.
  2. Toss the apples with sugar, cinnamon and drained raisins.
  3. Fry the breadcrumbs in 40 g of the butter until golden, then cool them.
  4. Stretch the dough over a floured cloth until it is almost transparent. Brush it all over with melted butter and scatter the crumbs across the lower third.
  5. Spread the apples over the crumbs, fold in the sides, and use the cloth to roll it up into a long log.
  6. Brush again with butter and bake at 190C for 40 minutes, brushing twice more, then dust heavily with icing sugar.
A cook working at a warm stove in a busy home kitchen
Our Kitchen

The Kitchen Behind Robrub Wirtshaus

Robrub Wirtshaus is a small home kitchen devoted to the cooking of Bavaria, the green and mountainous south of Germany, where a meal is rarely a quiet affair and the table is meant to be shared, long and loud, under a chestnut tree if the weather allows. We write these recipes the way they are still cooked in the villages around the Alps, slowly, plainly, and always with a generous hand on the butter and the lard.

Our one house rule is an old one: butter and Butterschmalz from the mountain dairies, honest pork lard rendered at home, and nothing else. Vegetable oil never comes through our door, because it never sat in the kitchens we learned from.

Guten Appetit, may your table always be full.