How’s Your Kraut Ball Roll?

Hand rolling kraut balls at Germania Society.

What most people don’t know is that the month of June in the Tristate is sauerkraut ball rolling month.    Mayor Pureval should officially designate it as such, given our area’s strong Germanic heritage.    These will be all the balls served at the local German fests and beer gardens leading up into the August start of the local Oktoberfest season.  I know, right? Oktoberfests starting in August?

Germania Society in Colerain Township spent last month hand rolling and then freezing sauerkraut balls for their end of August Oktoberfest.    They estimate that 30,000 kraut balls will be devoured by hungry Cincinnatians at this several day event.  

Volunteers have also been hand rolling “hundreds of dozens”  – that amounts to several thousand balls – for Oldenburg Indiana’s upcoming Freudenfest.     Oldenburg is a quaint town about an hour west of Cincinnati in Southeastern Indiana, that was populated by mostly Catholic immigrants from goetta country – that is northwestern Germany.  It’s known as the city of spires because of all the gothic churches in the small  farm community.   It’s also known as the mother house for the Franciscan sisters of Oldenburg.     These were the sisters who basically raised and taught me as a kid at Corpus Christi and St. Bart’s Consolidated Schools.  My favorite nun, sister Carlene is buried in the large nun’s section of the church cemetery behind the convent, as is Sr. Margaret, my sixth grade teacher, who ruled with an iron fist and a thick wooden ruler.

Freudenfest is your first opportunity to taste a locally hand-rolled sauerkraut ball in 2022.     The funny thing is that even though Oldenburg was populated by Goetta country Germanics, most people, like all our other “German” local festivals will wear the costumey lederhosen and dirndls of Bavaria, a region on the complete opposite end of Germany from the immigrants who founded Oldenburg.    That would like someone in New York wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots at an Italian fest like Giglio Fest in Brooklyn.    At Freudenfest, they dress Like a Southern Bavarian to celebrate a North German heritage.   Instead of lederhosen, men should be wearing black broad brimmed hats, vests, and the shin-length breeches of northwestern Germany.    And women should wear the Vegas-style hats women in the region wore, which would make for a super interesting festival.

For those of you who have never had a sauerkraut ball, its an American invention.   The closest thing you will find to the sauerkraut ball in Germanic Europe is the bitterballen in the Netherlands.  But that is just breaded and deep fried gravy – it has no sauerkraut, cheese, but does have some meat bits.

Here’s where the contention comes in.    Akron, Ohio, claims they invented the sauerkraut ball.   The first reference to theirs comes in the 1960s.   In Cincinnati, our restaurants like Mecklenburg Gardens and Lenhardt’s were already showing sauerkraut balls on their menus at least by the 1950s.      And the Cincinnati Kraut ball is different from the Northern Ohio kraut ball by one very distinct ingredient – the addition of a creamy cheese.   Interstate 275 is the demarcation line – sort of a Maginot Line – separating northern and southern Ohio sauerkraut balls.   Above it you will find no creamy cheese inside.

The Germanic deep fried ball has taken a few fusion U-turns from the standard sauerkraut ball.   Gliers and others serve up goetta balls.    And there are some even more innovative restauranteurs that make Hanky Panky balls – which are ground beef and cheddar filled balls.

A good kraut ball has a good seasoned kraut (better to be finely shredded than large chunks) with some small meat bits – ham or bacon, and then a good melty creamy cheese.   The breading should be not too thick, but dark brown and crunchy.    A good size is about golf ball size.   That makes it for a two bite affair if you’re dainty, and a decent one bite gobble if you’re not so dainty.    One friend – an Italian – makes her sauerkraut balls larger, about racquetball sized, and I hate to say it – are the best damn German sauerkraut balls I’ve ever had.   I guess their similarity to the Italian Arancini – the fried risotto ball – is similar so that the technique carries over into sauerkraut ball making.

And finally there’s the subject of what is an appropriate dippin’ sauce   I like a good spicy ground mustard as the dipping sauce, or a good homemade curry sauce  (not the gelatinous commercially made Currygewurz) like that made by Tuba Baking or the Lubecker.