In this post, we talked about erbswurst, what it was, and why we were interested in it. In today’s post, we will explore our first attempts at making it.

Image shows a bamboo tray with two bowls and one cup of soup on it. There is also a pepper grinder and an salt cellar on the tray.
An assortment of erbswurst for taste testing.

We found a wide variety of recipes for erbswurst, and so we decided to try three options for making it. One called for using water and vegetable stock to bind the erbswurst together. The second used bacon fat and the third used lard. So we started with a basic set of ingredients, divided it into three and tried them all.

Erbswurst

  • 10 tablespoons split peas
  • 2 tablespoons dried vegetables
  • 6 slices of bacon
  • 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
  • seasoning to taste

Cook the bacon until crisp. Saute the onion in the bacon fat until translucent and slightly browned. We had some bacon I had previously cooked, so I used some leftover bacon fat to saute the onions.

Our attempt at pea flour.

Blend the peas until they are a fine flour.

We added some dried veggies from our camping stash

Seasonings recommended in the various recipes included salt, pepper, garlic, marjoram, nutmeg, and thyme. We added pepper and a bit of garlic.

Variations

We separated the blended peas at this point into bowls so we could try the different recipes.

Our bowls of pea flour blended with the dried vegetables, adding the onions to the mix.

Vegetable stock and water

Add 2 tablespoons vegetable stock to the other ingredients. Blend, adding enough water to make a thick paste. Place in molds, dry for 6 hours at 155 degrees, the 20 minutes at 260 degrees.

Bacon fat

Melt bacon fat and add to the other ingredients to make a paste. Place in molds, dry for 6 hours at 155 degrees, the 20 minutes at 260 degrees.

Mixing the blended ingredients with bacon fat.

Lard or other hard fats

Melt the lard and add to the other ingredients to make a paste. Place in molds, dry for 6 hours at 155 degrees, the 20 minutes at 260 degrees.

Molds and drying the Erbswusrt

We tried using silicone ice trays as our molds. One of the videos we watched used clean tea light cups. Our erbswurst didn’t dry very well, and broke apart when we were taking it out of the molds. We think the molds were too deep.

The results

While the erbswurst tasted good overall, we ran into several problems. We didn’t get the split peas ground finely enough and had some grainy bits that didn’t want to re-hydrate well. The versions with the bacon fat and the lard were too greasy to enjoy. So we decided to buy some pea flour and try it again. Tune in next week!