The lost art of making Beaumont-style beef links
Byron Johnson has never seen a recipe for the all-beef links he makes by hand at his small Houston barbecue joint, Byron’s Gourmet Bar-B-Q. He learned the recipe by watching his grandfather Joseph Granger make them at his family’s barbecue/beer/juke joint in the Pear Orchard neighborhood of Beaumont in the 1950s.
By all accounts, the Silver Dime Beer Parlor in this traditionally black neighborhood in south Beaumont was a lively establishment. Granger was something of a jack-of-all-trades — a trained carpenter who ran the beer joint where he made the “Beaumont-style” beef links. Sausagemaking was a tradition in this area, also known as “Tripe City” because of the nearby slaughterhouses that local meat producer Zummo’s operated at the time.
Granger also cooked for the bazaars at the local Catholic church where he was a dedicated parishioner, and when he finished cooking he’d pick up the “windjammer” (aka accordion) and play tunes from the Cajun country of central Louisiana from which he hailed.
Coincidentally, Granger’s brother built and operated the legendary Granger’s Seafood shack in Sabine Pass, where another dish unique to Southeast Texas, the barbecued crab, was invented.
Johnson spent many afternoons after school watching his grandfather make the links that were various parts of beef trimmings, fresh chopped garlic and fragrant spices such as paprika and cumin, all stuffed into a beef casing and smoked on a barbecue pit for six to eight hours. Affectionately called “homemade links,” “garlic bombs,” “juicy links” or “grease balls,” these Beaumont-born links are among the most unusual culinary inventions of Southeast Texas.
Johnson is one of only a handful of pitmasters in the region who still make the links from scratch. He tinkered with the technique he remembered from watching his grandfather, and wound up making his own recipe.
“It’s a two-day process,” Johnson says. “It takes one day to wash and soak the casings, then the next day I mix up the meat and spices, stuff them into the casings and smoke them from about 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon.”
Johnson’s recipe uses 6 pounds of freshly chopped garlic for every 100 pounds of meat used. Though Beaumont-style beef links can be an acquired taste for the uninitiated, Johnson’s links are a smoky combination of beefy flavor, garlic and spices. He serves them in a not-too-sweet barbecue sauce he makes himself.
One thing Johnson is adamant about is that he makes links, not sausages.
“Links are all-beef in an all-beef casing,” he notes. “Sausages are beef and pork in a pork casing.”
Johnson also makes his own boudin (or “boudain,” as it is uniquely spelled in Beaumont), but it’s too much work for one person to make this Cajun rice-and-pork sausage.
“I call my sister in Beaumont and tell her I’m coming over to make boudin,” he says. “She gets everything ready, and then I drive to Beaumont to help with the mixing of ingredients and stuffing it into the casing.”
He brings it back to Houston and smokes it on the traditional offset, all-brick pits that he had built into his barbecue joint when he opened in 1996.
It’s getting harder to find handmade Beaumont-style beef links in Southeast Texas. In addition to Johnson, Felix Powell at Powell’s Bar-B- Q in Houston’s Sunnyside neighborhood oversees the links made by his assistant Wayne Lemon.
In Beaumont, the tradition lives on at Patillo’s Bar-B-Q, Broussard’s Links and Ribs, and Gerard’s Bar-B-Q. Leon’s in Galveston and Nick’s Bar-B-Q in Port Arthur also are known for the delicacy.
I ask Johnson, who makes upwards of 150 pounds of beef links per week, if he thinks his links are as good as his grandfather’s that inspired him to make his own recipe.
“I think mine are better,” Johnson says with a wink and a smile.