Croquet food: Encyclopedia - Croquet food

Croquet (food)

The croquette or croquet is a sausage-shaped parcel of food such as minced meat or vegetables, encased in breadcrumbs and deep fried.

Croquet food - The Dutch kroket

The kroket is a deep fried snack, popular in the Netherlands. It is crunchy on the outside, but very soft and smooth on the inside.

Each year 300 million croquettes are sold in the Netherlands (which works out to about 18 per person annualy), making it the second most-popular snack in the country. This number does not include croquettes made and consumed domestically, likely to number in the millions as well. Its popularity is only surpassed by the frikadel, a minced-meat hot dog, of which about 580 million are sold each year.

Vendors have often tried to market and sell it in other countries, but have failed, even in neighbouring countries like Belgium and Germany. Potato croquettes, however, are quite popular in some parts of Germany. In Japanese cuisine, a relative of the croquette, known as korokke ( コロッケ ) is a popular fried-food item, but is generally patty-shaped, and served with a brown sauce.

Croquet food - History

The croquette was actually a French invention, and was introduced in the Netherlands at the start of the 20th century. In 1909, the Dutch patissier Kwekkeboom came across a fried, ragout filled croquette in France. The French used all sorts of fillings to make their croquettes: various kinds of meat, fish, vegetables, and potatoes. Kwekkeboom introduced the croquette to the Netherlands and started producing croquettes filled with good-quality beef. The croquette became hugely popular, and nowadays there are numerous suppliers, though quality and price can differ greatly. Suppliers have experimented with all sorts of croquette fillings, including salmon, asparagus, sate, shrimp, cheese, and goulash.

Croquet food - Production

Since the croquette is basically a ragout fried in breadcrumbs, it is the ragout – and the meat with which it is made – which is the defining ingredient. Different sorts of meat are used, depending on the quality and desired flavour. The cheapest croquettes are made from horsemeat; a little better are pork croquettes; and the best are those made with beef. Often different meats are mixed; the quality of the croquette is then expressed in the percentage of a certain kind of meat it contains. To produce the ragout, a clear soup is drawn from hand-selected and weighed spices, a critical process. Separately a roux made out of butter and flour is created and together with the clear soup, the chopped meat and some gelatine, is steamed in a large kettle. After the mixture has cooled, a layer of breadcrumbs and eggwhite is added. The croquette is then deep-fried.

Croquet food - Assorted facts

Croquettes, and frikadels (and other hot snacks like hamburgers) are often sold in snack bars or through a coin-operated machine called an automatiek (see automat). The machine takes the shape of a row of little windows. Each snack has its own row. After inserting a coin in a slot, you can open one of the windows and take your snack. The machine is heated so that the snacks stay hot. Behind the machine is the kitchen where the snacks are prepared, the little windows being re-supplied from the back. Such hot-snack vending machines are often located at railway stations, or in busy shopping streets. One common vendor using these automatieks is FEBO.

Croquettes are often eaten in a bread bun, with mustard and a piece of pickled gherkin.

Croquettes are so popular in the Netherlands that even McDonalds sells them, in the form of a McKroket, which is just like a hamburger but with a thick disk-shaped croquette in place of the beef patty.

Croquet food - Urban myth

The ingredients of the cheaper croquettes are the subject of a recurring urban myth, according to which offal, pigs' eyes, cows' udders, chickens' toes, and other animal parts are added to the croquets to provide bulk and flavour. All this is very unlikely since Dutch food law is very strict, and any supplier adding animal waste to food risks being banned from the industry altogether. Some have suggested the possibility of these rumours having been started by the top croquette brands in the Netherlands – Van Dobben and Kwekkeboom – to distinguish themselves from the lower quality, cheaper, brands.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Croquet food", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki