Celebrating Oktoberfest? Here’s What to Serve With Your…

by

Heather Stephenson

September 10, 2026

Food & Nutrition , School of Arts and Sciences

Americans may associate Oktoberfest with Germany as a whole, but the celebration is distinctly Bavarian—and so is the food.

Along with plenty of beer and sausages, revelers enjoy dishes like soft pretzels and roasted pork knuckles at the annual festival in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, Germany’s largest state. But if you can’t make it there, you can still celebrate at beer gardens from Boston to Brisbane—or host your own party.

Here, Luisa Weiss, J99, the Berlin-based author of Classic German Cooking and Classic German Baking, shares her insights on Oktoberfest, along with three recipes to help you get in the spirit of the event, even if you can’t tell a schnitzel from a strudel.

Is Oktoberfest a big deal across Germany?

In my childhood in West Berlin, it was not a thing at all. Oktoberfest in Germany is traditionally celebrated only in Munich. It wasn’t until I went to college at Tufts that I realized that a lot of Americans think Oktoberfest is celebrated all over Germany.

Now during Oktoberfest, there is a tent in the center of Berlin where they try to recreate the party feeling of the massive tents in Munich, but it’s a relatively recent development. Any American celebrating Oktoberfest is celebrating it more than most Germans.

How does Oktoberfest reflect Bavarian culture?

The food is a mix of Bavaria’s greatest hits—really hearty, savory, home-cooked stuff—and the type of food that you can eat at a street fair. There’s the fried chicken, the huge joints of roasted pork, sausages in a bun, and the big puffy pretzels, which are delicious. You need to have solid food in your stomach to absorb all that beer that you’re drinking.

There’s a fashion aspect to attending Oktoberfest too. All the men wear lederhosen and the women wear dirndls, even women who would not be caught dead in one otherwise. Dirndls can be so expensive, and they channel this very old-fashioned femininity with the cleavage and the tight corseted waist and the apron. It’s so regressive. And yet people just love dressing up and going to the Oktoberfest tents and indulging in Bavarian culture this way.

For someone hosting an Oktoberfest celebration, which dishes would you recommend preparing?

Definitely the Bavarian cheese spread obatzda. Obatzda is a heavily spiced brie mix that you smear on good dark bread or eat with a pretzel with a glass of beer. It’s classic beer garden food.

I would also recommend roast pork with a very aromatic pan sauce made by basting the pork with beer as you cook it. In Germany, the pork roast is usually sold with the fat still attached, so that becomes this incredibly rich, crunchy crackling. The recipe I have in my cookbook is for a fatless pork roast, but if you can get a pork roast with the crackling still attached, great.

The pork is so rich and kind of heavy that having something bright and sour and crunchy takes the edge off a little bit. I recommend a krautsalat, a cabbage salad with little bits of bacon that’s been marinated in a dressing for 24 hours. You can make it in advance.

Also the Bavarian potato salad in my book, which is sliced potatoes dressed in a hot vinaigrette rather than a cold mayonnaise sauce. Then I would grill bratwurst and other kinds of sausage too.

And make a big plate of kaiserschmarrn for dessert. The kaiserschmarrn is a puffy pancake that’s sweetened with raisins and sugar, and you eat it with applesauce. It’s originally an Austrian recipe, but it’s been adopted by Germany and it’s served at Oktoberfest. It’s amazing.

These recipes are all extremely easy and the flavors are very approachable. If you know how to pour beer over a piece of meat in your oven, you can make the pork roast.

Three Recipes from Classic German Cooking by Luisa Weiss

A plate on a table holds a slice of bread with a cheese spread on it, with a bowl of radishes and glasses of beer nearby

Obatzda
Bavarian Cheese Spread

Obatzda, or Obatzter, is Bavarian dialect and roughly means “something mixed.” Obatzda is a creamy, rust-colored spread made of mashed-up brie or Camembert and given pungency from onions and caraway, typically served alongside astoundingly delicious fresh pretzels or dark rye bread, always with a freshly tapped mug of beer. Obatzda was originally developed to use up odd ends of cheese and has, over the years, become an essential part of the Bavarian Biergarten experience.

There are about as many variations of the recipe as there are Bavarians, so you can fiddle with the flavorings as you like. Officially, one is only supposed to use Bavarian Weißbier as the liquid to loosen the mashed Camembert. Personally, I’ve had better luck with heavy cream.

I like serving Obatzda with fresh soft pretzels or crusty bread and a big pile of crisp red radishes at the start of a meal, but it is also a very nice addition to a weekend breakfast spread or if you’re having Abendbrot [“evening bread,” a cold meal] for dinner. Ideally, serve Obatzda the day it is made, but any leftovers can be refrigerated for up to three days (note that it will deteriorate visually, however, and should be kept for family consumption only after the first day). The recipe is easily doubled.

Makes about 1 cup / 300G

Ingredients

1 wheel (250g) Brie or Camembert, chilled

1 ½ Tbsp / 20g unsalted butter

3 ½ Tbsp / 50ml heavy cream

1 ½ tsp sweet paprika

1 tsp whole caraway seeds

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

½ shallot, finely minced

Small handful of chives, minced

Cut the rind off the cheese and discard, then place the cheese in a mixing bowl. With a fork, mash it until creamy, working in the butter and cream as you go. (The cheese will be somewhat lumpy but try to get it as smooth as possible.)
Mash in the paprika, caraway, a pinch of salt and pepper, and the shallot. Adjust the seasoning to your taste.
Scrape into a serving bowl and sprinkle the entire top of the Obatzda with chives. Cover and refrigerate for an hour before serving.

On a kitchen counter, cabbage marinates in a transparent bowl, covered with a plate weighted down by a can

Krautsalat
Shredded Cabbage Salad

Krautsalat, tangy and refreshing, is a standard side salad in Germany. It’s cheap, feeds a crowd, improves with time, and can be made year-round. Plus, it’s a great foil to rich meat dishes. It took me a while to crack the recipe; eventually I got a hot tip from my friend Christie Dietz, a travel writer in Rheinhessen, who passed on a recipe similar to a popular one on Chefkoch.de, a German recipe site.

The key to the right texture is to marinate the cabbage in a mix of club soda and punchy dressing for at least 24 hours. The cabbage should be shredded super finely, either by hand or with a mandoline. The onion is nonnegotiable, but other flavors, like caraway (often paired with cabbage for its digestive properties) or bacon (typical in Bavaria) are up to you. The chives at the end add an aesthetic flourish. Krautsalat will keep, refrigerated, for a few days.

Serves 6-8 as a side

Ingredients

1 small head of green cabbage (about 2 lb / 1kg)

1 large yellow onion, finely minced

1 tsp whole caraway seeds, optional

⅔ cup / 130g sugar

1 ½ cups / 350ml apple cider vinegar

½ cup / 130g vegetable oil

1 Tbsp salt

Freshly ground black pepper

4 cups / 1L club soda

⅔ cup / 3.5 oz / 100g minced Speck or bacon, optional

Small handful of chives, minced, optional

Cut the cabbage in half and cut out the core and discard. Discard any outer leaves. Shred very finely. Place the shredded cabbage in a very large bowl. Add the onion and, if using, the caraway seeds.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar and vinegar until the sugar has dissolved. Whisk in the oil, salt, and pepper.
Pour this mixture over the cabbage. Then pour in all the club soda. Mix the cabbage well. Cover the cabbage with a lid that is smaller than the circumference of the bowl and weigh it down so that the cabbage is entirely submerged in liquid.
Let the cabbage sit for 24 hours (this can be at room temperature).
Remove the lid and drain all the liquid from the bowl. Place the salad in a serving bowl.
If adding Speck, fry it up in a small pan for a few minutes until crisp. Drain the fat and mix the Speck into the drained salad.
Top with chives, if desired, and serve.

A cast-iron skillet filled with a torn-up pancake, set on a table and seen from above

Kaiserschmarrn
Torn Souffléd Pancake

Kaiserschmarrn, an airy souffléd pancake torn into fluffy shreds, is one of Austria’s most famous dishes. When brought to the table, Kaiserschmarrn are showered with confectioners’ sugar and served with a little dish of stewed plums or applesauce for dragging the fluffy pancake through. The acidic and cooling bite of the fruit compote is a wonderful contrast to the hot, sweet pancake. It’s no surprise that they are on virtually all mountaintop restaurant menus in the Tyrolean Alps; there may be no better restorative lunch than a platter of white-capped Kaiserschmarrn eaten after a strenuous morning of skiing.

There are a handful of explanations for the name (which means “emperor’s nonsense”), but it seems to be widely accepted that the dish was a favorite of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria (1830-1916) and his wife, Elisabeth, more widely known as Sissi. Kaiserschmarrn are usually categorized as a dessert, and they are indeed a very lovely dessert, especially when served on a large platter with many forks for many eaters. But Kaiserschmarrn are also often eaten as a sweet main course in Austria.

There are many variations on Kaiserschmarrn. Some recipes include rum-soaked raisins. Some caramelize the pancake shreds in the pan with additional sugar. Some just cover them with a thick cloak of powdered sugar. Some add sliced almonds to the pan, some use chopped almonds. Some cook the Schmarrn only on the stove, others use a combination of stove and oven.

After many, many tests, the recipe below is the one I like the best. You make a simple batter lightened with a glossy mass of egg whites, then cook it on the stove in a well-seasoned cast-iron pan to set the bottom before transferring it to the oven, where it puffs up and cooks to completion. At the end, tear up the pancake with two knives in the pan and then toast the pieces a few more times with a little extra butter to crisp up any soft edges. (If you’d like to add sliced or slivered toasted almonds to the pan, this would be the moment to add them.)

Serves 4

Ingredients

¼ cup / 40g raisins, optional

2 Tbsp rum, optional

1 ¼ cups / 300ml whole milk

4 eggs, separated

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp plus ⅛ tsp salt

1 ¾ cups / 220g all-purpose flour

¼ cup / 50g granulated sugar

3 to 4 Tbsp unsalted butter

¼ cup / 30g slivered or sliced almonds, toasted, optional

Confectioners’ sugar for serving

Plum compote and/or applesauce for serving

Preheat the oven to 350°F / 180°C. If desired, place the raisins in a small bowl and pour in the rum (alternatively, use just enough hot water to cover). Set aside to plump.
In a mixing bowl, whisk the milk into the egg yolks until well-combined, then whisk in the vanilla and ½ tsp of salt. Whisking constantly, slowly add the flour. Whisk until smooth.
If using the rum raisins, drain the plumped raisins and stir them into the batter. Set aside.
In a separate clean bowl, use electric beaters to beat the egg whites. As soon as they begin to froth, add the remaining ⅛ tsp of salt. As soon as large bubbles form, slowly pour in the granulated sugar. Continue beating until the whites hold stiff, glossy peaks.
Stir a quarter of the egg whites into the flour and yolk mixture to lighten it, then stir the remaining egg whites into the lightened batter until no white streaks remain and the batter is creamy and airy.
Melt 2 Tbsp of butter in a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet (10 to 12 inches / 25 to 30cm) over medium heat. When the butter starts to foam, pour the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Cook for about 5 minutes, always at medium heat, until the pancake bottom is just set (you can test this by delicately running a very thin knife or spatula around the edges of the pan to see if the pancake holds its shape).
Immediately place the pan in the oven and bake for about 12 minutes if using a 12-inch / 30cm pan and about 15 minutes if using a 10-inch / 25cm pan. The pancake will have puffed up and the top should be a pale golden color.
Remove the pan from the oven and, using two dinner knives, slice the pancake crosswise four or five times, then rotate the pan and slice again four or five times. Add the remaining 1 or 2 Tbsp of butter to the pan with the torn pancake pieces and set the pan over medium heat. (If adding the toasted almonds, now is the moment). Using the spatula, toss and continue to cut the pancake pieces for just another minute or so, creating bite-size and smaller pieces and letting them brown a bit more in the pan.
Place the pan on the table (on a trivet!) and, if serving for dessert, sift a generous amount of confectioners’ sugar over the top. If serving for lunch, you can skip the confectioners’ sugar if you like. Pass plum compote and/or applesauce to be eaten with each portion of Kaiserschmarrn.