It's Tea Time For Germany

John Linn

This wurst is the best.

​I'm a sucker for pate -- I'll eat any sort of meat blended into a paste and cured. It started when I was a maybe 10-years-old. My parents would buy Oscar Mayer Liverwurst (yes, there's such a thing) and spread it on butter crackers. I must've ate six tubes of the thick pink paste before finding out it was actually liver. (Was I a slow kid?) I was grossed out for a moment. But then I quickly decided I didn't care, and popped more of that wurst in my mouth with excitement.

I was shopping in Fresh Market the other day when I came across this tube of teawurst, a type of pate I've never had before. It was only four bucks, so I bought the little bundle and a loaf of bread and brought it home to taste.
 
Teawurst (or teewurst) is actually a German "sausage" that's been smoked over beech wood. It's made with beef, pork, and bacon, and seasoned with a hefty dose of paprika. It gets its name from the German tradition of eating this stuff with afternoon tea. In my estimation, it beats the crap out of a crumpet.

​Though it's technically a sausage, teawurst isn't meant to be sliced. It's spread on bread typically, but I also tried it on (gasp!) crackers. The flavor is similar to liverwurst or braunschweiger, in that it's smokey, meaty, livery, and soft. There was some slightly visible meat fibers in the mix, which almost reminded me of a smoked salmon spread (though it wasn't fishy). It is really fatty stuff, however. I used to sit down and go through half a tube of liverwurst with a glass of cold milk, but I couldn't eat more than a few ounces of teawurst without feeling like it was invading my arteries.

Obviously, you can pick up teawurst at Fresh Market, though I'm sure it could be hunted down in most supermarkets as well. If not those places, maybe you'll find some here: