Douchi - Bemmerl

The Austrian language occasionally finds words for extremely specific conditions. Bemmerl, for example, refers to those small, round pellets excreted by animals such as goats, rabbits, and sheep. Which came first is unclear. Is rabbit droppings called Bemmerl because it looks like one? Or was Bemmerl originally simply the droppings themselves — and only later did everything small and round acquire the same name?

In any case, Bemmerl is the very first association an Austrian has when encountering douchi for the first time. A vegan Bemmerl. It is not excrement! Au contraire — it is a miracle! Much like frog becomes prince, ugly duckling becomes swan. Bland soybean becomes douchi.

That such transformation processes are not accomplished with the blink of an eye is something both the Frog Prince and Jeff Bezos’s new wife could croak a song about.

Through an elaborate sequence of soaking, boiling, inoculating, molding, soaking again, and drying, the soybean is thoroughly worked over before disappearing for months of final maturation and eventually rising like a phoenix from the ashes. Flavor-wise, that is! Visually, douchi most certainly does not compete in the spring peacock parade somewhere between magnolia blossoms and Laura Sánchez. It remains a Bemmerl.

What is definitely ka Bemmerl (Austrian dialect for “no small matter”), however, is douchi’s contribution in the kitchen. As a snack, stirred into rice or couscous, or as a punchy addition to vegetables, it never disappoints. It is the secret ingredient in our chili crisp. And should your diners think they ought to pick out the little Bemmerl they themselves have sown, reprimand them sharply. There is no greater umami punch packed into 4 millimeters!

These little Bemmerl perform magnificently in this dish! On the menu today!

P.S. The ostentatious frontal projection of Amazon’s newlywed counterpart is the exact opposite of Bemmerl. The fact that the Austrian language has no dedicated term for it seems rather odd in a country so devoted to cleavage-enhancing dirndls.