Sauerkraut and Weenies
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This is an old-fashioned Southern main dish. As the name suggests, all you need is sauerkraut and weenies to make this tangy yet delicious dish.
This sauerkraut and weenies recipe was one of my dear favorite meals as a girl and still is. It is a prime example of a budget meal (very common in the South back in the day) and so very good! Oh goodness, I’m getting hungry.
Now, I realize some folks are just not sauerkraut fans. Chances are, I lost about half of you in the title of this post. But I know some folks saw that photo and your stomach started growling, and chances are pretty darn good that you’ll be having this for supper tonight. Those who don’t fit into this category, feel free to think of the rest of us as weird. We won’t mind and there will be more sauerkraut for us! Everyone has their preferences and it’s all good either way.
This is one of those meals that is great with slices of polish sausage. But I still like to cook it how Mama did growing up; just by chopping up a few weenies and cooking until the sauerkraut and weenies brown a bit. That’s all there is to it. You can add as many weenies or sausage as you like and if you’re vegetarian, just get some vegan hot dogs and keep on keeping on. If you want to take it up a notch, you can make your own sauerkraut as I do in this post. Put it on your Classic Reuben Sandwich and you will crave it every day.
Recipe Ingredients
- Sauerkraut
- Weenies
- Salt and pepper
Helpful Kitchen Tools
How to Make Sauerkraut and Weenies
Slice your weenies and put them in a large skillet.
Add in about two cups of sauerkraut.
Cook this over medium to medium-high heat, stirring often.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
You can start with 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 1/8 teaspoon of pepper and then adjust to make it just right for you.
Cook this until your weenies and sauerkraut get a little brown or you can just cook it until everything is heated through.
Now here is a supper from the old days!
Storage
Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days. I recommend reheating on the stovetop on low heat until heated through.
Recipe Notes
- How many weenies you use is up to you. We used to have to determine this based on how many we had, so to be able to use as many as you want is a big step up nowadays.
- I have a friend from Germany ~waves to Gudrun~ who swears by the bagged sauerkraut so I started buying it and now I’m a convert, too. You can get it in the refrigerated section near the weenies usually and sometimes near the deli if they have a refrigerated section there as well. Mama likes the kind you get in a glass jar and we’ve both used the kind that comes in a can (which you get on the vegetable aisle). Overall, they are all good and there isn’t a lot of price difference so it is up to you to pick your favorite.
- As mentioned, you can use a different type of sausage with the sauerkraut. For example, sauerkraut and brats (bratwurst) is a popular dish in Germany. Kielbasa or franks also work.
- For extra flavor, add 1 diced apple to the skillet as well.
Recipe FAQs
What goes well with sauerkraut and weenies?
Here are some serving suggestions for your sauerkraut and weenies:
- Dinner rolls (with mustard)
- German potato salad
- Mashed potatoes
- Fried potatoes
- Freshly fried corn (or creamed corn or baked corn on the cob).
- Baked beans
- Broccoli salad
- Fresh green beans
- Cornbread
Do you drain sauerkraut before cooking?
If you’re using jarred sauerkraut, you’ll want to drain it before using it.
What condiment goes well with sauerkraut?
Mustard, ketchup, green tomato relish, and hot sauce (like sriracha or tabasco sauce) all pair perfectly with sauerkraut.
How do you season sauerkraut?
Besides salt and black pepper, if you want a touch of sweetness add up to a tablespoon of brown sugar. If you want a more savory flavor, add a teaspoon of caraway seeds. Alternatively, for a kick, add a dash of red pepper flakes or a teaspoon of paprika.
What food goes well with sauerkraut?
Here are some other dishes that pair well with sauerkraut:
- Hot dogs or hot dog chili
- Pork chops
- Reuben sandwich
- Grilled cheese sandwich
- Polish sausage or kielbasa sausage
You may also like these recipes:
Southern Fried Cabbage With Bacon
Ingredients
- 2-4 weenies or polish sausage
- 2 cups sauerkraut
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Slice weenies into small pieces and place them in a skillet over medium to medium-high heat.2-4 weenies or polish sausage
- Add sauerkraut. Cook, stirring often until kraut and weenies brown slightly. Salt and pepper to taste.2 cups sauerkraut, salt and pepper to taste
- Serve hot.
Nutrition
This was originally published in 2010. I updated the post and photos in 2020.
Life is really simple,
but we insist on making it complicated.
Red kidney beans with chopped onions, sometimes cornbread sometimes bread, a variation was large limas with the same, and really different was broadbeans, as you can tell we ate a lot of beans, also bacon, biscuits and sourkraut, potatoes fried with onions and sage were often served with a slice of bacon and in summer a salad from the garden. Lots of times it was waffles and eggs, sometimes fried oatmeal mush left over and scrapple made wth the hambone and fried. The later in the month the more we ate maccaroni with butter, rice with butter, potates with butter and maybe an dgg or slice of bacon, sometime we got maccaroni and tomatoes. Everything but the rice is still being cooked but I don’t loke rice much and being diabetic was told to avoid it, which made my day.
Sorry I’m a Northerner (Massachusetts) but here’s my two cents: pizza Frite (homemade fried dough) with powered sugar or sugar and cinnamon, pasta with homemade sauce.
P.S. I love all these recipes. The other night I made one and my husband asked, “This is so good did you get it from that Southern Plate website?” 🙂
Oh my, that made my stomach rumble!!! Proud to have ya here!
Thank you, Christy- that means a lot to me.
Our po folk meal was spam and corn mixed with tomatoe sauce.
🙂
Have y’all ever had macaroni and milk? It was pretty good and filling! And, by the way, the stores still sell those nasty little cans of Vienna sausage and potted meat – YUK! And they still cost less than 50 cents!
Sorry that I’m super, super late to this post. I love hotdogs and sauerkraut, I grew up on it but usually in a crockpot together.
Hi Christy! I didn’t grow up in the South, but growing up in Pennsylvania, we had our own version of ‘Po’-folk food….can’t say we ever called it by that name though, haha! My mom would often make what she called “frizzled hamburger’ – browned ground beef with brown gravy and mashed potatoes. Because it was cheap, we also ate our fair share of spaghetti with Ragu jar sauce. If things were really tight, my mom would make these canned ‘Vienna sausages’…ewww!!!! I think they were around 50 cents a can back in the 80’s. Oh, how I hated those things! I laugh when I think back to when my husband and I started dating. He invited me to dinner for the first time and his mother made scrapple sandwiches… (say what?!). The following week he invited me to dinner and she made SOS… (you mean this stuff is meant for human consumption?) By now I started to get concerned that I had not left a good impression the first go-round and she was exacting revenge for something….the third time he invited me to eat with them, she served split-pea and ham soup ( I hated peas!). I finally broke down and asked him if his mom hated me…he looked totally confused and I explained that each of the times I came to dinner, she made something that….. let’s just say, those Vienna sausages were starting to look real good to this hungry girl! I really thought his mom hated me, and this was her way of trying to get rid of me. To this day he and I still laugh at that memory. My dear mother-in-law passed unexpectedly 11 years ago, and not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could taste her split-pea with ham soup again – yes, I learned to make it AND love it and even learned to tolerate scrapple sandwiches for my dear hubby’s sake. As for the creamed chipped beef….not a chance……….LOL!
What a precious story though, I am glad that it now brings fond memories and giggles!!
One of our favorite family meals (3 kids and me and hubby) was a variation of this. I found the recipe on the back of a smoked sausage package years ago. Drain and rinse in cold water one can of kraut; thinly slice one package of smoked sausage; chop one medium onion and one medium bell pepper. Cook the onion and pepper until almost done in 2 tablespoons cooking oil, stir in the sausage and let brown. Stir in the kraut and 1 tablespoon yellow mustard. Heat thoroughly. The family loved this meal. My 33 year old son called me about a month ago and asked me how to make “that kraut and sausage dish” everyone loved. Good memories and good food.
P.S. This recipe was the first I had ever seen that called for draining and rinsing the canned kraut, but I have been doing it ever since. Makes it taste like the refrigerated kraut but at much less cost. I like the Aldi kraut also!
Christy, in South Georgia, we called those dirt necklaces “Granny beads”.