I am the least foodie of all in this family, My favorite recent culinary development is
Soylent. I've been trying to get the girls to switch over to that with no success yet.
On the other hand, I have a few more conventional food tricks that I can do really well. Brats are one of the easiest and all around best bang for the buck in both time and money. These have been a major hit at our game nights.
I haven't researched any official recipes for Brats. This one might be exactly like someone else's, or not.
First I get two packs of Johnsonville brats. Johnsonville are the cheap ones in every store. I will eventually try it with fancier brats, but it's good to see what you can do with variation in the process before you start also varying the ingredients.
I cut them in thirds and put them in a pan with a lid with 12 ounces of beer. I have tried it with dark high-brow micro brews and I didn't like the result as much. PBR, or something else light and uncomplicated has produced my favorite brats so far. My recent batch was made with Korean Hite. A foreign beer cheaper than PBR was something I had to try.
Cutting them in thirds is optional, I just like to create a bit more surface area to crisp.
I bring the beer and brats to a boil, then turn them down to low and simmer with the lid on. I used to do it for at least 3 hours, recently I tried it simmering for one hour and found it didn't make a difference. I always like recipes where the margin of error is big like this.
Once they have simmered for an hour, if you still have a lot of liquid, you might take the lid off and turn it up so that you have mostly just pork lard, and only a little of the water-based beer + collagen mix, then add onions and put the lid back on. Stir a few times until the onions are not too crisp and not too mushy.
The result is amazing over rice.
