Polish Sausage and Saurkraut-GAPS Approved

This recipe is a family favorite!  I come from a Polish/German family and growing up polish sausage and sauerkraut was a staple.  And now that I have a family of my own, it has become a staple as well.  So when we decided to do the GAPS Diet, I quickly set out to find a way to continue making this dish for my family.  Below is my rendition of polish sausage and sauerkraut.

Polish Sausage and Sauerkraut
A couple links of Polish Sausage *
1 half gallon container of Homemade Sauerkraut
2 onions, chopped
2T of Lard
Any other GAPS approved vegetable to eat with this meal.

Cut the Polish Sausage up into individual portions.  Place in a pot and fill the pot with filtered water, enough to cover polish sausage.  I usually boil the sausage for an hour to give the water good flavor.

Melt lard in a frying pan (for recommendations on which pans to use, click here.) When lard is melted, place onions in pan and slowly cook.  Burner should be set to medium.  You want to caramelize these onions, so stir contiguously until soft and caramel in color.  You can add a little salt to bring out the natural sweetness of the onions.  Once done, ladle about 3 ladles full of the polish sausage broth into the frying pan and stir it with onions.  Let sit until onions mixture is warm, but not hot**.  Place sauerkraut in the frying pan and mix with onions and broth.  I usually let it sit for about 20 minutes for the flavors to meld.  Serve with sauerkraut with polish sausage and whatever vegetable you would prefer to eat your meal with.  We will often saute up some broccoli with garlic and lard.  Its super tasty.

* Make sure you buy your sausage from a reputable source or make it yourself.  It needs to be sugar and nitrate free.  We buy ours from a small polish market that sources all of their products from an Amish farm. The name of the store is Calma Optimal.

**The reason you want your onion and broth to cool down before adding the sauerkraut is because you do not want to kill all the good bacteria you worked so hard to make in the sauerkraut.  The way I look at is, if I spent four weeks making that sauerkraut, I want to know that I can eat my polish sausage and sauerkraut with all the good bacteria still present.


Let me know if you tried this recipe and what you thought!  Or if you make anything similar, please share.  I would love to hear your ideas!