Slow-Cooked Reuben Brats

Election week. I voted early, on Saturday, in a line that wrapped around my neighborhood elementary school for two blocks. I stood in line for an hour and a half and talked to no one because pandemic protocols and also because I was full of the specific nervous energy you get in a year where the stakes feel that high. I voted and went home and made a pot of soup and waited.

I am not going to write about the election results here except to say: we found out, eventually, and I had a lot of feelings about it, and those feelings belong to me privately and not to the blog. What I will say is that on the night we found out I made Ryan pancakes at midnight because we were both still awake and neither of us had eaten properly all day, and there is something about pancakes at midnight that is exactly the right thing to make when you cannot sleep and the world is large and uncertain and you need something ordinary and warm in your hands.

Patty called at 7:15 on election morning with no context except "today is a big day, please eat breakfast." I ate breakfast. I told her I had. She said good. That call is its own kind of steadiness. I do not know what I would do without the 7:15 call. I think I would be less anchored than I am.

November cooking is entering its highest form: braised things, roasted things, all the ways you can use low heat and time to make something from the cheap tough cuts and the late-season vegetables. The blog this week is beef stew with parsnips, which I had never put in stew before and am now evangelical about. Parsnip is the vegetable nobody talks about, sweet and earthy, and it goes in stew like it was always supposed to be there. Under ten dollars for six servings. November is for this.

The stew recipe I mentioned is its own thing — I’ll get there — but what I kept coming back to that whole week was the idea of putting something in a pot, walking away, and trusting that time would handle it. That is what a slow cooker is, philosophically. You set it up in the morning when you are still anxious and uncertain, and by evening something has transformed in there, low and steady, without your intervention. These Reuben brats are built on that same logic: a little layering, a little patience, and the heat does the rest. It turns out that is sometimes exactly what you need from a recipe.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 6–8 hours (low) | Total Time: 6 hours 10 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

8 uncooked bratwurst links
1 can (14 oz) sauerkraut, drained and lightly rinsed
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 cup beer (lager or pilsner) or beef broth
1/2 cup Thousand Island dressing, plus more for serving
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
8 slices Swiss cheese
8 hoagie rolls or bratwurst buns, toasted

Instructions

Layer the base. Spread the drained sauerkraut and sliced onion in an even layer across the bottom of a 5- or 6-quart slow cooker.
Add the brats. Nestle the bratwurst links on top of the sauerkraut and onion layer in a single layer.
Add liquid and seasoning. Pour the beer (or broth) over everything. Drizzle the Thousand Island dressing evenly over the brats. Sprinkle with caraway seeds and black pepper.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 6–8 hours or on HIGH for 3–4 hours, until brats are cooked through and have absorbed the surrounding flavors. Do not lift the lid during the first 4 hours.
Melt the cheese. In the last 10 minutes of cooking, drape a slice of Swiss cheese over each brat, replace the lid, and allow the cheese to melt.
Serve. Toast the buns lightly. Place one brat on each bun, top with a generous spoonful of the cooked sauerkraut and onion mixture from the slow cooker, and finish with an extra drizzle of Thousand Island dressing if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow-Cooked Reuben Brats — The Week I Needed the Stove to Do the Work