Balkenbrij Recipe

This balkenbrij is perfect for breakfast, hearty enough for brunch, and delicious enough to transcend the boundaries of mealtime rules to be served alongside a beer at just about any time, including dinner.

I’m excited about the recipe I’m sharing here: both because it is rare to see Dutch food updated in a more modern context and also because, during my research for this recipe, I found that it has a unique connection to my family! Read on.

What is balkenbrij?

Balkenbrij was typically made from leftover pork parts (especially the head) after butchering a hog as a way to use the scraps so they wouldn’t be wasted. One Dutch writer described it as “a mixture of brains, eyeballs, and other leftover parts of pigs, pressed together with lard to form a loaf. Sliced thin, it could be fried and dished up with corn syrup, presumably to cover its many sins.”

The fat and leftover meats would be boiled, mixed with buckwheat, formed into a loaf, sliced, and then pan-fried to crisp the edges. Buckwheat was added to extend the scraps and make it a hearty, gut-filling meal that would see you through the day. Though the Dutch immigrants made their way to the Americas, the traditional buckwheat was often replaced with cornmeal, making it more akin to another dish that immigrated to the Americas via the Pennsylvania Dutch, Amish, and Mennonite communities – scrapple. It’s also similar in some ways to goetta, which migrated from Germany and found a home in Cincinnati.

It was a dish often eaten for breakfast, the buckwheat and fatty pork laying down a solid base that would stick to your ribs and get you through the day. It was undeniably peasant food, though, the kind of food born out of the necessity and determination to make each scrap count for something. Nothing was wasted: this was original ‘nose to tail’ dining before it was trendy.

How I discovered this recipe?

This specific balkenbrij is inspired by a meal I had in Holland, Michigan, the home of a large population of Dutch immigrants and Dutch descendants that have capitalized on their town’s name to add Dutch traditions to what would be a typical Michigan beach town. Windmills and klopfen (the wooden Dutch shoes) abound. I drove through the area, tracking down the one physical document of my Dutch grandfather’s immigration to Canada that was stored in an archive in the area. After a stop at the library, it was a stop at the brewery (that’s pretty much how I roll).

Looking through the menu at the brewpub, I had never heard of balkenbrij despite growing up in a Dutch family, but I recognized the ‘brij’ from other dishes I’ve made. I asked the bartender about it and rather than trying to describe it, she simply said, “it’s probably our most popular dish; you should definitely try it.” And I was sold. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

It was delicious, though, and I couldn’t stop talking about it after I ate it. Dutch food rarely wins any sort of popularity contest and rarely does anyone try to update it. But it was SO GOOD! Perhaps one of the best things I ate on a trip built around eating delicious things. I knew I had to come home and try to make something similar.

While working on the recipe and trying different iterations, I felt I was getting close to a final recipe. Then, I reread some passages from a family history book. The initial phase took me a few tries, both because there were few recipes in English, especially ones that didn’t use pork heads and leftovers, and because I wanted to try and recapture that taste of the one I had in Michigan.

My great uncle on my dad’s side, at one point, had compiled and written a family history of my great grandmother – from her time growing up in Holland through to her immigration to Canada and her life here. It is a meandering, cluttered book meant to chronicle family history and is based on chats with my great grandmother before she died and the diaries she kept. I had gone through it previously and highlighted all the sections that had anything to do with food, thinking that maybe some writing and recipes might come out of it.

There is one (and only one) recipe included in the book, randomly dropped into the middle of a story about her life in Holland. I had obviously highlighted it but hadn’t thought much of it as I didn’t recognize the dish and it looked a little unlikely that I would ever make it: I mean, when was I going to make a dish that used a pig head and cracklings?

Looking back after my trip and my recipe testing, I recognized the recipe for balkenbrij immediately! My great uncle wrote this about my great grandmother and her balkenbrij:

“Butchering was a busy time for Hendrika [my great-grandmother] too. One of her jobs was to clean the pig’s intestines to be used as sausage casings. She made regular meat sausage but also such delicacies as liver sausage, lung sausage, blood sausage, and headcheese. Hendrika also had the gift of making a wonderful delicacy known as balkenbrij. It was something known in the Achterhoek where she was born, but in Drenthe [where she was living at the time after marrying my great-grandfather], it was unknown.”

This tracks with what I knew about balkenbrij that it was a recipe common in the south of Holland but not in the north where my family came from. But my great-grandmother had kept it alive. The recipe that follows is a typical one, though it never specifies the type of flour she used. It also changed my recipe testing, as I wanted to incorporate elements of this recipe to carry on the gift of this ‘wonderful delicacy’! So here’s my recipe, based on the one I ate in Michigan, my great-grandmother’s recipe, and my small tweaks.

What makes this balkenbrij special?

This recipe forgoes the pleasures of the eyeballs and offal and chooses a more premium cut (pork butt) to make a meatier version of the loaf while still ensuring it has the necessary fat that makes it so delicious. Making pulled pork should be familiar to many (it’s a classic American BBQ food), and the extra step of frying the loaf crisps the edges of the tender pork, not unlike pork carnitas. The pork in traditional balkenbrij was typically ground or minced into a more delicate texture, but here I’ve left it in longer, meatier pieces, giving it more texture and making it more like pulled pork.

This recipe also takes the dish beyond the loaf itself. The maple in the braised cabbage adds a sweetness that balances the salty, fatty pork, replacing the more traditional corn syrup (we don’t need to cover the sins of this loaf!). The corn syrup was likely added as Dutch immigrants made their way to places like Michigan, where maple syrup is abundant and they were taught how to harvest it by the indigenous peoples of the area. I’ve added the spices into the loaf, following my great-grandmother’s spicing, but also spiced the cabbage – adding some anise for a unique but traditional Dutch twist. The fried egg on top takes it one step closer to a breakfast dish we might all be familiar with and is pretty much my secret breakfast weapon – add a fried egg to just about any leftovers from the day before and, tada, you’ve got a killer breakfast!

While perhaps pushing your comfort zone in terms of what you’re familiar with, this recipe has all the elements of a classic savory American breakfast. The pulled pork matches the meaty part often provided by bacon or sausage, the buckwheat in the balkenbrij corresponding to the hotcakes. The fried egg is a hallmark of these breakfasts too, and then the plate often has an abundance of sweet maple syrup that spreads over the plate, tying it all together. I, for one, love when my bacon sits in that pool of maple syrup.

This balkenbrij recipe is classic Dutch fare, something my family made in Holland, but it’s also an updated, (North) Americanized version. It’s perfect for breakfast, hearty enough for brunch, and delicious enough to transcend the boundaries of mealtime rules to be served alongside a beer at just about any time, including dinner.