What Meat Foods Are Included in a Typical German Meal?

Germans enjoy different meats with all meals, starting with breakfast and ending with their evening meat and bread snack. Some meats are very common in Germany, and people associate a few of them with traditional German foods. Additionally, some foods such as bacon, are as common in this European country as they are in the U.S., but how the Germans eat them differs from the way they're consumed in America.

German breakfasts tend to feature plenty of sweet items such as rolls with honey or marmalade. However, for the people who'd like a little more than sweet bread for their first meal, Germans gravitate toward meats such as hams and salamis. They typically eat these meats in cold-cut fashion, adding slices of them to bread or rolls that they've topped with real butter and a variety of cheeses.

Although pork dishes in general have found popularity in Germany, many of the meat foods that Germans eat specifically contain bacon. However, it doesn't count as a common breakfast meat like it does in the U.S. Instead, Germans combine bacon in dishes that most Americans might find odd, including "birnen, bohnen und speck," which literally means pears, beans and bacon. In Berlin, people love bacon with staple foods such as potatoes and sausage. In fact, the German favorite, Bratwurst, is cooked with bacon to give it a smoky, delicious flavor.

Sausage counts as a very common meat in Germany. Although Bratwurst is well-known outside Germany, many different types of sausage exist besides Bratwurst. Germans will eat blood sausage and white sausage in a number of dishes. German delis keep all manner of sausage stocked not only for daily consumption but also for holidays. Additionally, cold cuts play an important role in the German diet and many of them are sausage. Aside from eating them on bread, Germans will cook sausage with sauerkraut and potatoes or add them to stews and soups.

Sauerbraten is a traditional roast dish in Germany made from beef, pork, veal and in the past, horse meat, although this isn't as common anymore. Cooks prepare the meat by allowing it to marinate in a vinegar mixture before cooking it with ingredients such as carrots, berries and raisins. The exact flavoring for this meat dish varies by geographic region in Germany. It's also a German dish that has found popularity in the U.S., where Americans combine it with other traditional German foods such as schnitzel or bratwurst.