Making the sausage in Houston barbecue
Nowadays we associate it with politics and the process of making laws, but with the Texas barbecue renaissance of the past decade, the literal meaning of “making the sausage” is making a comeback.
In the dark days of Texas barbecue — that era between the late 1980s and mid-2000s when an obsession with automation and efficiency dumbed down the culture and quality of our smoked meats — the art of making sausage from scratch was overwhelmed by the mass-produced kind flooding the market.
Along with automated, electric smokers and pre-made sides such as potato salad procured in 1-gallon tubs, prefabricated sausages were marketed as good or better than handmade sausage.
For a while, of course, consumers fell for it, much like we all fell for the imaginary benefits of TV dinners. (Convenient! Modern! Delicious!)
But then the artisanal food movement caught on, and smallbatch, handmade foods regained the spotlight.
“Craft barbecue” became the term for smoked meats made using the low-and-slow, traditional methods resurrected by barbecue joints including Franklin Barbecue, Snow’s BBQ and Gatlin’s BBQ in the mid-00s.
High-grade briskets were simply seasoned with salt and pepper and then smoked lowand-slow over a clean fire of post oak wood. Other meats, including pork ribs, chicken and turkey, also got the craft treatment. The production of side dishes such as coleslaw and potato salad were brought back inhouse.
In-house sausage-making was slow to catch on, however. The time- and space-consuming process was put on the back burner as other barbecue techniques were resurrected and perfected.
Things began to change several years ago. Though old-school joints such as Byron’s Gourmet Bar-B-Q (since closed) had always made sausage from scratch, the newer craft-barbecue joints were just beginning to experiment with it. Killen’s Barbecue in Pearland was one of the first new-school joints that committed to making all of its sausage in-house.
Newer, smaller barbecue joints without the capacity to make their own sausage began procuring product from smaller, local producers including Ruffino Meats, B&W Meat Co. or Burt’s Meat Market.
Recently, even the smaller joints have turned to making sausage in-house, including Tejas Chocolate + Barbecue in Tomball.
“We’re a little out of control,” joked Tejas owner Scott Moore, referring to the many different kinds of sausage he now makes from scratch with his brother, Greg.
Tejas offers sausage specials on certain days, such as the Thursdays-only Barbacoa Boudin featuring silky, tender beef cheek combined with spices and rice that are stuffed into a pork casing and smoked on the pit.
But it’s the sausages on Tejas’ everyday menu that are the real standouts, especially the new Chile Relleno sausage. As the name implies, this is made from the ingredients of the classic Mexican dish — roasted poblano peppers and melty pepper-jack cheese. These are combined with ground brisket — a mix of 70 percent lean cut and 30 percent fat — and Tex-Mex seasoning and stuffed into a pork casing.
The sausage is then placed in the smoker until fully cooked, then cooled down in a walk-in cooler overnight. It is then placed back on the smoker briefly to bring it back up to temperature and then served.
According to Moore, this process of heat-cool-heat is essential to getting the casing to be “snappy,” i.e., tender enough to bite through. In my experience, the biggest mistake rookie sausage chefs make is not cooking it properly so that the casing is too tough to chew. Scott acknowledges they are still perfecting the process for tender casings, but the one I sampled was spoton.
The Chile Relleno sausage at Tejas may be the breakout star of Houston barbecue’s newfound obsession with handmade sausage. This alchemy of cheese, peppers, spices and beef is the essence of Tex-Mex and Texas barbecue — two of Houstonians’ favorite things combined in one snappy casing.