02/14/2026
Winter brats (and how to make them)
Before moving to Pennsylvania when I was 11, I was growing up on a small farm in southwest Wisconsin. I loved that time and place, and there are some things that always bring the memories back. Some of those things are good apple cider, the smell of woodsmoke from a home stove, and seeing clothes hanging out on a line against a blue sky or green hill. Two of the strongest reminders are winter and, funnily enough, bratwurst.
Winter often carries beauty even when still and desolate, and it was no exception on Sime Ridge in Crawford County. In the dead of winter there were great drifts of snow that would build up against the sides of barns and anywhere else it was allowed to. All year round my friends and I would scheme at church on Sundays about how we might convince our parents to let us all gather at one of our houses for that period of time between the morning’s worship service and the evening’s Gospel meeting. In the winter, a prime activity was to scale the drifts against the host’s barn and engage in cowboy shootouts, armed with our thumbs and forefingers as L-shaped revolvers. We drew and fired and all fell, slain, and toppled dramatically down the drifts until we sunk into a resting place. This was to be repeated until someone’s younger sibling got hurt or too much snow infiltrated our winter attire. Though it is often not until later in life that we learn to slow down and appreciate stillness, I remember sinking into the snow, exhausted from outdoor play and looking around at what was around me during a good snowfall. My red golden retriever did not exhaust so easily and pounced and flopped around me as I appreciated the muted stillness of a nearly whited out landscape, quiet enough to hear the soft impact of large, fluffy flakes that piled around me and bounced off my stinging face. In the following days it would become smooth and windswept, with the rare Wisconsin hills that characterized its southwest corner becoming canvases for subtle pastel blues, yellows, and pinks depending on the time of day and amount of sun or clouds.
It was on such a day as best I can recall that I first remember having a bratwurst. It’s not unlikely that I had one before, or pieces of one when smaller, but this was the first memory that registered. I was skeptical that it was just a large hot dog, but my dad convinced me to give it a try. Instead of the taste of hot dogs that I used to find odd but tolerable as a kid, I was met with a coarse and delicious link bursting with rich flavor. I have been hooked ever since.
While my favorite way to have it is grilled over charcoal in a bun (preferably with sports on tv) there are a lot of ways to enjoy them in the winter in a variety of forms, which I will include in the pics/slides ahead!
Or you could have a winter defiance day like me. I recently decided I would raise my morale by donning an old Antonio Brown jersey, shorts, and flip flops to go out and grill brats despite the near 0° temps. Two strides onto the porch my hubris evaporated and I adopted a grimacing, hunched waddle to the grill to place the links, then desperately thwap thwap thwapped in my flip flops back across the icy deck to the door. It was still a moral victory.
