These Crispy Pork Fritters Are So Well-known, My Household’s Restaurant Makes 200k of Them a Yr

Rising up in Ohio, I figured sauerkraut balls came visiting from Germany, or perhaps Japanese Europe. Reality is, they’re in all probability from Cleveland.

I’ve heard rather a lot about these crunchy little pork-and-kraut fritters through the years: They’re the most well-liked appetizer at The Golden Lamb Inn, a resort and restaurant in Lebanon, Ohio, that my household has owned since 1926. The kitchen rolled about 200,000 of them in 2024.

The Golden Lamb occurs to be the oldest constantly working restaurant in Ohio, however our sauerkraut ball recipe solely dates to the Nineteen Sixties, when an accountant named Edith, visiting from Cleveland, shared a model with longtime chef Norm Sims. That’s all I knew about its historical past for years. After performing some analysis, I’d wager a number of orders that Edith obtained her recipe from the supply, or someplace near it: a white-tablecloth restaurant in her hometown known as Gruber’s.

Trying by means of many years of newspaper articles, I didn’t discover any point out of sauerkraut balls as we all know them (versus meatballs cooked with sauerkraut, which have been round for a very long time) till the late Nineteen Forties. That’s when diners and meals writers started paying attention to the signature appetizer at Gruber’s—created as a tasty and economical means to make use of up meat scraps, per numerous accounts.

In 1949, the nationally syndicated columnist Erich Brandeis wrote about attempting “a scrumptious concoction akin to neither my spouse nor I had ever seen or tasted earlier than” at a celebration. He went on: “The hostess gave my spouse the recipe—you’re taking some sauerkraut and put it by means of the grinder along with boiled ham. You combine this with some thick white sauce, kind it into little balls, and roll them in bread crumbs. Then you definitely deep-fry them till they flip good and brown and serve, first sticking a toothpick in every ball.” I don’t know the place Brandeis, who lived in Connecticut, had his first sauerkraut ball, however that feels a lot just like the Gruber’s recipe that ran in papers nationwide within the years after World Battle II. So does the recipe we use on the Golden Lamb.

Within the many years since, the town of Akron, about forty-five minutes from Cleveland, has formally adopted the sauerkraut ball. Readers on the Akron Beacon-Journal voted it the town’s official meals in 1996. For those who search “sauerkraut balls” on Newspapers.com, you’ll see that that paper has run about twice as many articles in regards to the heartland croquettes—1,278, on the time of publication—as some other within the nation. Judy Orr James’s 2022 cookbook “Akron Household Recipes” concludes with a whole chapter on sauerkraut balls, subtitled “It’s An Akron Factor.” 

However even James acknowledges that Cleveland did it first, noting that the Beacon-Journal didn’t point out sauerkraut balls for the primary time till November 1952, after Gruber’s had already impressed the well-known meals writers Clementine Paddleford and Duncan Hines with theirs.

And whereas the sauerkraut ball has developed through the years, together with on the household restaurant, which now has its personal secret recipe, the Gruber’s model was a nationwide phenomenon for a cause. I went by means of dozens of reference recipes when researching this dish, and although I experimented with newer additions and substitutions together with cream cheese (quite common), breakfast sausage (widespread), and pork shoulder (much less widespread), none improved on the unique components. So, I cleaned it up for a contemporary viewers, making solely comparatively minor modifications to enhance the feel and taste. The foundational recipe is all about steadiness—between pork chops and ham, hearty meats and zingy sauerkraut, a young middle and a crisp, crumb-coated crust. This recipe maintains that.

There are related dishes in Europe, together with Dutch bitterballen, wealthy with beef and gravy, and Spain’s well-known croquetas de jamón. Sauerkraut balls comply with a well-known components—sautéed meats and aromatics sure with a roux, formed, breaded, and fried. And the mix of pork and sauerkraut is widespread in European cookery, in fact, particularly in Germany and Japanese Europe, the place many northern Ohio households hint their roots. Within the melting pot that’s the Midwest, these imported concepts got here collectively to kind an ideal little appetizer, bar snack, and occasion chunk. Drawing on European custom however virtually actually native to the Buckeye State, these sauerkraut balls steadiness the flavors and strategies of the Outdated World with the playfulness and ingenuity of the New.

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