What's the Bowl Without the Brats?
FOR many Green Bay Packers fans, Super Bowl XXXI is a chance to have a brat party, which is not to be confused with a frat party. Both may well be punctuated by yelling, screaming and what the neighbors would consider immature behavior. But only a brat party is sure to have Wisconsin-made bratwurst, the distinctively spiced pork sausage.
This may explain why polystyrene coolers filled with brats (rhymes with 'cots') are being shipped to homesick Packers fans across the country this week. Bonnie Buchanan of Appleton, Wis., sent three shipments to help relatives in Vermont, Massachusetts and New York celebrate.
Robin Richter of Sheboygan, Wis., is shipping several dozen bratwursts to her brother in Minneapolis. Pat Kornely, a Green Bay native who now lives in Flagstaff, Ariz., has ordered about 40 pounds for a Super Bowl party.
It is gospel in Wisconsin that sausage made out of state is a pale imitation of real bratwurst, which was developed by 19th-century German immigrants, who substituted easy-to-find pork for veal in a traditional German weisswurst.
'Bratwursts are very closely identified with Wisconsin culture and with Green Bay Packers culture,' said Dan Alesch, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay, who has studied the sociology of the Packers franchise. 'Because bratwursts are made here -- and so hard to find anywhere else -- they've become a kind of symbol.'
If not a necessity. 'For a big game, you've got to have brats,' Greg Sauter of Canton, N.Y., said, explaining his willingness to spend about $45 for overnight delivery of six pounds of brats, which he ordered through the Internet.
Like many other fans, Mr. Sauter and Mr. Kornely are turning for their supply to Sheboygan, which promotes itself as 'the bratwurst capital of the world.' Although some Wisconsin bratwurst makers sell their wares in supermarkets nationally, to the brat connoisseur only those sent from home will do.
Mr. Kornely gets his brats through a friend, who buys them at Miesfeld's Triangle Market, where Chuck Miesfeld still uses his grandfather's 56-year-old recipe (the secret, Mr. Miesfeld said, is in the spices).
Small markets like Miesfeld's, which are not federally inspected, cannot legally ship sausage. But anyone who goes into the specialty meat store can carry a just-purchased package of sausage to the post office, which is what Mr. Kornely's friend did for him last week.
That is not the only solution. Some sausage makers, like Eddie Jacobs of Jacobs Meat Market in Appleton, offer to send out-of-state customers his spice blend and the natural sausage casings for a kind of do-it-yourself brat kit.
Brats are traditionally grilled and, if not eaten immediately, kept warm in a mixture of heated beer, butter and onions. They are served on a hard roll. Toppings can include coarse ground mustard, sliced onions, pickles and ketchup. There is disagreement about whether or not sauerkraut is an acceptable topping, and lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise are to be avoided. At least, that is the word from the Sheboygan Chamber of Commerce. There is universal agreement, however, that brats should be served two at a time (hence the phrase 'double brat').
When the Packers are playing at home, the tailgate parties start early, and the smoky haze from grilling brats hangs over the parking lot. Packer fans who hope to recreate this experience at the Super Bowl should stay home. A spokesman for the Louisiana Superdome said that open fires are not allowed in the parking garage there.
Correction:  January 25, 1997, Saturday
A picture in The Living Section on Wednesday with an article about bratwurst was published in error. It showed summer sausage.