As a kid, one of the more obscure foods I was exposed to was panhaus. My paternal grandfather was a farmer, so there was always fresh meat that he had either raised himself or had been given by neighbors. Panhaus was one the treats the we go occasionally. As long as you don’t mind the fact that you’re not really sure which parts of the pig it’s made out of, it’s incredibly tasty.

In short, panhaus (also, panhas or ponhaus) is cornmeal, pork broth, light spices, and maybe meat and buckwheat flour. Basically, polenta made with pork stock instead of chicken stock, water, or milk. This is the amazing thing to me: all of these seemingly different cultures, whether it be Italian, Mexican, German, or Appalachian, all have this same basic dish. Cool.

Panhaus, and it’s sister scrapple, is a traditional country German dish, originating in Westphalia and the Rhineland. The Dutch (in the Netherlands) have a similar dish named Balkenbrij. There’s an interesting German Wikipedia page on panhas (translated) which I’m going to work on translating. German panhaus is described as a traditional dish of part of the Schlachtfest (Slaughter Festival) which “combined a traditional harvest festival with an opportunity to dine on the meat that wasn’t suitable for long-term processing and storage” (link).

As with all traditional dishes, there’s tremendous variation among recipes. I’ve seen many different recipes for panhaus and scrapple, and there’s a lot of overlap and no clear distinction. The panhaus I remember is was a small, gray loaf with a smooth texture. This page states that the basic difference is that panhaus doesn’t contain actual meat, while scrapple does. There’s also a lot of variation on the parts of the pig that go in; some use head only, some head minus fatty jowls, snout, and ears, some use all of the random scraps. None call for pork offal, which my dad remembers being used instead for “puddin’”.

foxfire
if it tastes like fish, can you eat it on friday?

 

Foxfire 1 gives Mrs. Mann Norton’s recipe for scrapple as (1) take a hog head sans eyes and ears, (2) boil until the connective tissue dissolves, (3) pick the meat and strain the liquid to remove any bones, (4) mix with cornmeal, sage, and pepper, (5) gel into a loaf, and (6) slice and pan fry. Yummy, seriously. This recipe is what I decided to start with.

ground pork
the other white meat

 

Since most people don’t like to cook things that still have their face, it’s pretty hard to find a whole hog’s head. And I don’t have a pot large enough. And I want to stay married. So, I settled for boring pork sausage (pork, pork fat, salt, pepper, sage, thyme) from Otto’s Sausage Kitchen in Portland. While the panhaus I know (and love) shouldn’t have any meat in it, I decided to put it in, since there’s not much you can do with it anyway after making the stock (or what my ancestors would call the “likker”).

ground pork boiling
bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

 

I boiled a pound of sausage in about a quart of water for about 20 minutes. This cooked the meat (obviously) and produced a good likker. I used a potato masher to breakup the meat. I then added two large leaves of sage and some pepper. I started adding the cornmeal, whisking it in to prevent clumping. I then added 2 packets of Knox unflavored gelatin, prepared as per the directions in a bit of cold water, to make it set better, since there would be no delectable dissolved connective tissue from the bones.


these are a few of my favorite things

 

I added the yellow cornmeal until it was pretty thick. I let the cornmeal cook for a few minutes, then put the mixture in a loaf pan and let it sit to cool.


meat (corn) loaf

 

When it was cool and had gelled nicely, I sliced a couple of pieces off and pan fried them in butter for a few minutes.


fry it up, baby

 

Seriously delicious.

I found out later that white cornmeal is more traditional in my family. A brief summary of dry corn products now. Take the dry corn kernels, coarsely grind them, and the smaller pieces are corn grits and the larger pieces are yellow cornmeal. Take the dry kernels, soak them in a mild lye solution to remove the yellow husk, and you have hominy. Take this, dry it, and grind it, and you get the smaller pieces as hominy grits (or “true” grits) and the larger pieces as white cornmeal. Next time, white cornmeal, and only meat liquor. I’ll have to try to find pork bones or scraps somewhere.


in process of being eaten

 

The Monday after I made my loaf, I pan-fried a few more slices and a sort of polenta-like thing with a tomato sauce, truffle oil, parm-regg cheese, on a bed a baby spinach. Wait, what was that sound? Oh, right, every ancestor I’ve ever had rolling over at the mention of panhaus and truffle oil.


so much goodness on one dish

 

Commercial Producers:

And of course, the Fall events schedule wouldn’t be complete without odd festivals combining two completely different foods: The Apple-Scrapple Festival with their Scrapple Chunkin’ Contest.