Travelling around Austria with a Local - #012 Austrian food: Leberkäse = Liver + Cheese?

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Travelling around Austria with a Local #012 - Austrians: mad about something called liver-cheese

Hi and welcome to my blog Travelling Around Austria with a Local!

I'm Theodora from Austria. Together with friends from abroad, I'm exploring my home country - and I talk about its beauty and its curiosities. In the twelfth episode, I'll tell you more about Leberkäse, which literally translates as liver-cheese - hey, wait, don't be put off immediately: 1) it's probably the best fast food you can get and 2) we'll check if there's liver in liver-cheese.

Is Leberkas a mixture of liver and cheese?

Ok, so this is probably the question that got some Austrians and most foreigners worried right now. Now, while I love cooking, I have never made Leberkäse, or Leberkas. But according to the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, all it takes is some pork, spices, and ice cubes. No liver - and the cheese is optional! (In fact, there are lots and lots and lots of variants.)

Austrians are serious about their Leberkas

In fact, one Austrian was so serious about his Leberkas that when he didn't have enough money on him to buy a Leberkassemmel, he drove his car into a supermarket, as the the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten reported on 8 February 2018

Worshipping Leberkas in songs

This is just a small selection of songs about Leberkas - check back to YouTube for more if you don't believe me:
The Leberkas-Semmel-Blues

Vollegas Leberkas by Die Spritbuam ("die" is an article like "the" - nothing to do with dying!)

Dance music about Leberkas

An ode to Leberkas based on Let It Be by The Beatles

A song about Leberkas by Austrian comedian Mike Supancic

Another ode to Leberkas

Should you try Leberkas?

Absolutely yes. It's delicous. I love it. But then - I'm Austrian. An Englishman once told me it was the most disgusting food he's ever eaten. I suppose you'll have to try it yourself - and prepare to be amazed and go cold turkey when you go back to your home country, as Leberkas is, to my knowledge, only sold in Austria and Bavaria, where people call it Fleischkas (meat cheese).

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Disclaimer: I do not own the content of the YouTube videos that I have posted in this article and I am not responsible for the content of the websites to which I posted links.