How to Make Texas Beef Sausage
Final week I spent some time in Westward Texas eating barbecue. I've done a few tours through the expanse already, so I know not to get excited when I see "High german sausage" on a carte du jour, simply I had a temporary memory lapse. The prospect of finding a coarsely basis and smoky beef sausage was rapidly dashed when a big greasy section of grocery store-form sausage, footing to the consistency of a hot canis familiaris, sat on the plate. I asked around about how this cheap sausage came to be known equally "German." I couldn't observe an answer, so I headed to Key Texas to observe the origin of what nosotros consider to exist authentic Texas-German sausage.
The rising of the Texas meat marketplace began in the nineteenth century, as I've chronicled on TMBBQ earlier, a response to the increasing urban population's demand for beef. Barbecue equally we know it today sprung from these original meat markets. Which isn't to say these were places dedicated to serving smoked meats, similar the restaurants familiar to us at present, but rather markets that extended the sales potential of their raw beef leftovers by cooking them as fix-to-swallow meats. Any scraps or trimmings not cooked off as smoked cuts made their way into sausages.
Sausage even made an appearance in the earliest advertisement for charcoal-broil, a description of a Bastrop butcher's stall, plant in the Oct 25, 1878 edition of theBrenham Weekly Banner.
By the 1880'south, smoked sausage could be purchased at Kemper Bros. in Fort Worth, Fritz Fisher's in Brenham, and the competing interests of John Kohler's and Alexander & Gill's in Bastrop.
Many of these meat markets were run by High german immigrants or those with High german ancestry, people from families that migrated to Texas in the 1830s and 1840s (the Czechs wouldn't bring their sausage traditions to this country until the early 1900s). With these families came nutrient traditions and civilisation, in this example, Former Earth sausage skills. But not everyone was happy with this influx of German links. A disparaging report from the Dallas Daily Herald came in 1875:
"A German sausage factory has been established in Austin. Information technology may not be amiss to remind our city authorities that this is a splendid opportunity to dispose of our surplus dog ingather."
Then in 1882, William J. Moon, the human being who would make German sausage famous in Texas, started stuffing links in Elgin. When Moon began his meat delivery business, his motto was "Butcher Today, Deliver Today." Bryan Bracewell, the current possessor of Southside Market, recently described Moon's early performance to me. "He was a minor town butcher that slaughtered beef, pigs, and lamb on a piece of holding virtually a mile exterior of town," Bracewell said. "He'd haul the fresh meat into Elgin and sell it door-to-door from a equus caballus fatigued buggy. The barbecue and sausage was just a derivative of having fresh meat and no refrigeration. If he wasn't a expert salesman that day, he had to smoke it or smell information technology."
By 1886 Moon had opened a storefront in downtown Elgin, and the popularity of his spicy sausages grew, eventually earning the affectionate title of "hot guts." Today at Southside, they use a recipe similar to Moon'due south original. They've taken out some of the cayenne and blackness pepper to tone downwardly the heat, but information technology's still an all-beefiness sausage in pork casings. Bracewell is mum on the other ingredients, merely from the ingredient list on their packaged sausage, I can tell what it doesn't take in it: garlic.
Texas-Czech sausages all comprise garlic in one form or some other, but Texas-German sausages are simpler: beef (primarily) coarsely basis and seasoned with salt, blackness pepper, and maybe some cayenne, stuffed into natural hog casings and smoked. "Information technology's similar a subcontract sausage," Bracewell said. "Meat, salt, and black pepper. There'south nothing in there similar herbs or garlic that isn't shelf stable."
Southside Market place isn't the merely Texas-German sausage business in Elgin. R.G. Meyer opened Meyer'due south Elgin Sausage in 1949, using a recipe his father Henry brought back from Deutschland. Meyer's opened a restaurant in 1998, iii years after Elgin was named the Sausage Capital of Texas, a designation bestowed upon the Texas Legislature in 1995.
Lockhart, the Barbecue Upper-case letter of Texas, is also home to some mighty fine Texas-German sausages. Charles Kreuz Sr. opened Kreuz Market place in 1900, and the original sausage recipe is nevertheless being used today by the Schmidt family at both Kreuz Marketplace and Smitty's Market. It's an 85-to-xv-percentage beef-to-pork ratio with salt, blackness pepper, and cayenne. Both joints apply pork casings now, just Rick Schmidt told me they used to utilise beefiness casings. "My dad and the Kreuzes always used beefiness guts to make the sausage," but the supply for beef casings stale up soon later on he took over, and then they made the switch to pork casings.
They as well add some bull flour equally a binder. Schmidt said he tried making it without the balderdash flour in one case. "When I cut into it was like hamburger meat that crumbled and all that juice merely ran everywhere." Kent Black of Blackness's BBQ in Lockhart agrees. His restaurant has been serving Texas-German language sausage since 1932, and information technology's all almost the beef. Black said that ground pork has enough of natural bounden capability, only beef needs some help, and that's where the bull flour comes in.
Don't assume that cutting out pork ways these beef sausages aren't juicy. There'due south still plenty of fatty in them, and information technology'll run down to your elbows if you aren't conscientious. One of my favorites is in Luling at City Market where Joe Capello has been smoking them since 1962. "At present we've got the pork ribs, so the trimmings from the ribs go into the sausage now, which makes information technology about 95 percent beef and v percentage pork," Capello said. "Nosotros tell them it's beef sausage, merely it even so has a little pork in it." Buy a link or two and swipe them through their mustard barbecue sauce to experience 1 of the finer bites of Texas barbecue.
Subsequently asking around, nobody could tell me if there was a detail German sausage recipe that the Texas version was imitating, but Rick Schmidt recalled how he was convinced of the provenance of Kreuz Market's recipe.
"I couldn't answer that until nigh twenty years ago….A charter coach came through at the one-time identify. It was a big grouping of German citizens…A lady came and asked me 'are you lot the owner?' I said 'Yes mam.' She said 'I want to tell you that your sausage is the only sausage that I've tasted here that reminds me of my hometown.'" Schmidt asked for farther explanation. "She said 'each little boondocks has a wurstmeister, a sausage maker, so each town has its own flavor. Your sausage tastes like my hometown."
Schmidt said he was besides stunned to inquire what her hometown was, just that's how he knows his sausage is a High german sausage, and that's skilful enough for me.
*****
Other barbecue joints across Texas where y'all can find Texas-German sausages:
Bellville Meat Market place in Bellville
Black's BBQ in Lockhart
Chisholm Trail Barbecue in Lockhart
Metropolis Market in Luling
Urban center Meat Market in Giddings
Cousin's BBQ in Fort Worth
Davila'southward BBQ in Seguin
Gonzales Food Market in Gonzales
Hays Co. BBQ in San Marcos
Kreuz Market in Lockhart
Lockhart Smokehouse in Dallas and Plano (From Kreuz Market in Lockhart)
Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor
Luling Bar-B-Que in Luling
Meyer's Elgin Smokehouse in Elgin
Prause Meat Market in LaGrange
Smitty'southward Market in Lockhart
Schmidt Family Barbecue (From Kreuz Market in Lockhart)
Stiles Switch in Austin (From Thorndale Meat Marketplace in Thorndale)
Southside Market in Elgin
Zimmerhanzel'south in Smithville
Source: https://www.texasmonthly.com/bbq/history-of-texas-german-sausage/
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