It’s finally warm enough to start having cookouts at our Company Store here in Wittenberg, Wisconsin. The first Nueske’s cookout of the year took place last Friday afternoon. We served up grilled Angus ribeye sandwiches with fried onions and mushrooms (on the side, if you prefer).
Nueske's Company Store Cookout, April 2012
Weather permitting, we’ll be hosting cookouts in front of our company store on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. and, if it’s a really busy day, you might catch us serving a little later into the afternoon. The menu will vary, but some of our favorite things to serve are the afore-mentioned Angus Ribeyes, our Applewood Smoked Wieners, our Applewood Smoked Bacon Cheddar Brats, and maybe even some pulled Applewood Smoked Chicken Sandwiches. As long as it’s nice outside, we’ll be serving right out of the back of Bob Nueske’s log cabin camper. We’ve also got picnic tables for you to sit at and enjoy your lunch.
It’s unseasonably warm here in Wisconsin right now. We’re looking at highs in the 70’s (80 today!) when we should still be expecting winter weather warnings and temperatures still in the 30s… not that you’ll catch us complaining. All this warm weather makes us want to haul the grill out and cook as many meals on it as we can before an unexpected late-season blizzard decides to come rolling through The Northwoods. So, let’s talk Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Bratwurst.
First and foremost, Wisconsinites require brats (that’s “bratwurst” to the rest of you) to complete a proper grilling or tailgating experience. We’ve got several varieties of applewood smoked bratwurst, including applewood smoked cheddar bratwurst, and our newest creation, applewood smoked BACON cheddar bratwurst. These new applewood smoked bacon cheddar brats contain chunks of our famous smoked bacon and, thus, are intensely smoky, very juicy, and have been fairly flying out the door here in Wittenberg.
Nueske's New Applewood Smoked Bacon Cheddar Bratwurst
This past Saturday, Nueske’s had the pleasure of attending the Isthmus Beer & Cheese Festival in Madison, Wisconsin. Let us assure you, there was no shortage of good brews, excellent cheeses, or Applewood Smoked Meats.
For $40.00 a ticket, thirsty (and hungry) festival-goers from Madison and beyond flocked to the Alliant Energy Center Exhibition Hall for a gathering of local brewers great and small and some of the best cheese-makers in the state. For good measure, our friends at Isthmus threw in some well-placed fine foods that didn’t fall into the beer or cheese categories but were very much enjoyed, such as Gail Ambrosius Chocolates and Fromagination (OK, so they have cheese, but lots of other foods, too!). Read the rest of this entry »
Our most recent tasting dinner was at Bark Hot Dogs in Brooklyn, just last night, and Nueske’s smoky specialties were prepared as part of each course and each course was served with a special Sixpoint Craft Ale. Bark Hot Dogs has been a great partner to us and we were very happy that they paired us with the talented folks over at Sixpoint for this get-together. Here’s what the tasting menu from the Bark dinner looked like:
SMOKED DUCK CROQUETTES
Pickled Hot Peppers
Sixpoint Smoked IPA
BACON CHEDDAR DOG
Smokey Bacon & Grafton Cheddar Sauce with Pickled Red Onions
Sixpoint Bark Red Ale
SMOKED & BRAISED PORK SHOULDER WITH CRISPY EGG
White Corn Grits, Dried Sweet Corn, & Grafton Cheddar
Sixpoint Mad Scientist *7
CHOUCROUTE GARNI
Hawthorne Valley Sauerkraut Braised with Apples, Bacon, Bratwurst, & Weisswurst, served with Young Potatoes and Grainy Mustard
Sixpoint Crisp Pilsner
ALMOND BRIOCHE BREAD PUDDING
Smoked Bacon Maple Sauce & Vanilla Rum Ice Cream
Sixpoint Diesel Stout Nanokeg
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We visit New York each October to attend the StarChefs International Chefs Congress, where new ideas and foods are introduced and discussed by the best in the food business. Each year, talented chefs from all over the U.S. and around the world convene at the Park Avenue Armory for several days of cooking demonstrations, presentations, and sampling of new ingredients, flavor pairings, and perfectly executed dishes.
Nueske’s prepared four separate dishes for attendees to sample during the congress:
- Chopped Cobb Salad with Creamy Dressing
- Smoked Duck, Chicken, & Shrimp Gumbo
- Smoked Duck Wontons with Duck Glacé and Spicy Mustard
- Smoky Ham Muffaletta
In this post, we’ll share our recipe for our smoky ham muffaletta with you. The muffaletta has its origins in New Orleans and we were proud to be serving a dish from a city with such a wonderful and rich culinary history. In this recipe, some substitutions are OK, but it’s very important not omit or tamper with the olive salad – it’s an integral part of any muffaletta!
Anyone who’s hosting a Thanksgiving meal this year is probably about to get into full swing. There’s a lot of planning that can go into a meal like this one. Most of us stick with our old stand-bys. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we have something that might be new to you – and your guests – and it won’t disappoint.
We offer you this little Thanksgiving twist in the form of a gloriously juicy, tender applewood smoked turkey. If you haven’t tried serving a smoked turkey before, this might be a good time to think about getting your hands on one. They’re moist, flavorful, and most importantly, they NEED NO COOKING. You can serve our smoked turkey cold or room temperature… of course, if you prefer your turkey to be warm, just heat it gently, while covered, in the oven with a bit of water in the bottom of the pan.
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Recently, we’ve had quite a few people call us asking for an even thicker slice of bacon than our classic sliced Applewood Smoked Bacon – which was no slouch in the thickness department as it was. In the past, we would have suggested that these individuals buy a piece of our unsliced slab bacon and cut it to their desired thickness. That’s been a really good option for some of our more hands-on home cooks but not for everyone. Not everyone wants to slice their own bacon at home. If you’re a lover of thinner strips of bacon, read no further, just go straight to our thin-sliced Applewood Smoked Bacon.
Now we have big, ultra-hefty slices of our Applewood Smoked Bacon for those of you that want your bacon even thicker than our regular rashers. We cut each slice at ¼” thick, which might not sound like much, but if you get out your ruler, you’ll see it’s extremely substantial. To give you a visual of just how thick this bacon is: it’s probably only slightly thinner than your smartphone or almost exactly the width of a No. 2 pencil. For bacon, it’s BIG.
Bacon this thick is something you can eat with a knife and fork. Some people call this a bacon steak and there are even restaurants that serve it this way, like Manny’s Steakhouse in Minneapolis. A huge, meaty piece of bacon like this also fares well on the grill and we’ve heard from many who prefer to cook it that way.
Let us know what you like to do with your SUPER-Thick Applewood Smoked Bacon!
We know that a great many people are enjoying more heat in their foods these days. Jalapeños, while on the low end of the heat scale, provide a little zip and the pleasant note of roasted pepper when cooked on the grill. You can stuff these little peppers with a great many delicious things and wrap them in bacon for a simple appetizer at your next grill-out.
All you need to do is core and seed your jalapeños and stuff them with whatever you like. Before you start stuffing, soak as many toothpicks in water as you have jalapeños for a minimum of 10-15 minutes. That way, when you secure that big piece of smoky bacon around the jalapeño with a toothpick, having soaked the toothpicks first will prevent them from going up in flames right off the bat and freeing your bacon from its proper place around the pepper.
Nueske’s slow-smokes our chickens over smoldering embers of Wisconsin Applewood until they are perfectly smoky and sweet. The flavor is incomparable but the best part about our plump Applewood Smoked Chickens and Chicken Breasts is that they’re ready to eat – no cooking is needed, so you don’t need to heat up the kitchen on a hot August evening. It gets surprisingly warm and sticky up here in Wisconsin during the dog days of summer and there are times when even folks from down south would be surprised at heat in the Northwoods. You don’t have to serve smoked chicken cold but it’s a great way to add protein to a meal without having to cook anything. A sweetly smoky, lightly salted chicken is easy to toss into a picnic basket and serve alongside a Thermos full of lemonade and cool slices of summer melon.
Nueske's Applewood Smoked Whole Chicken
This year is one more that we can count our trip to the Fancy Food Show as a big success. Nueske’s always has a good time at the show talking with chefs, restaurateurs, and our other food business friends – but it would be untrue to say we didn’t have just a little more fun on the years when we’ve won a coveted NASFT “sofi” Award… and we’re proud to say that this has been more years than not in the past decade.
Our newest creation, Nueske’s Wild Cherrywood Smoked Bacon, was awarded a Gold sofi in the (Special) Diet & Lifestyle Category for being an outstanding gluten-free, no nitrites/nitrates added, and all natural product. This category honors products that fit special diet and lifestyle trends.
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