The return of Beaumont-style beef links
The Beaumont-style beef link exemplifies the eccentric and diverse Southeast Texas barbecue tradition.
These small, plump, horseshoe-shaped sausages with a ruddy, red-brown tint are known by colorful nomenclature, including “juicy links,” “garlic bombs” and “grease balls.” For connoisseurs, they are often just called links, homemade links or “lanks.” Beaumont-style beef links can be an acquired taste because of the generous — some say egregious — amount of beef fat used in the traditional recipe. Indeed, this link is famous for the oozing, molten-red liquid-fat that pours out when it is sliced open.
For those of us who grew up in Beaumont eating this style of sausage, that pool of spice-laden fat sitting under the link makes our mouths water, and is fair game for sopping up with the stack of white bread that usually accompanies the dish.
The origin of this beef link, like many Texas barbecue dishes, is not clear or certain. The story most often told is that it originated at Patillo’s Bar-B-Q in Beaumont in the early 1900s. Family patriarch Jack Patillo and wife Roxie McFaddin are traditionally credited with the original recipe. To this day, Patillo’s in Beaumont serves that same beef link.
The link then made it to Houston in the 1920s, when barbecue man Matt Garner moved from Beaumont to the Freedmen’s Town area of
Fourth Ward, opening his famous barbecue stand on West Dallas. He would pass the recipe along to pitmaster Harry Green of Green’s BBQ on Almeda, which became famous for the links in the 1970s but closed many years ago.
More recently, Powell Bar-B-Q and Byron’s Gourmet Bar-B-Que made them from scratch, though both establishments have closed in the past few years. In a column from 2018 (“The end of an era for Beaumont-style barbecue in Houston”), I lamented the closure of Byron’s — the last place in Houston that made this style of link from scratch.
“And there’s still hope for Houston — the cyclical nature of the restaurant business may inspire an entrepreneur to revive the traditions and techniques of Beaumont-style barbecue here someday,” I wrote.
Fortunately, that day has come. Owner and pitmaster Kevin Mason of the recently opened Lonestar Sausage & BBQ has revived the lost art of making Beaumont-style beef links.
Mason grew up eating these links at Green’s and also watched them being made at a now long-gone Acres Homes joint called Red Rose BBQ, where his aunt worked.
Still, reviving the recipe and technique has been a challenge. He and his father — a beef-link connoisseur — have spent countless hours testing different recipes. On a recent visit, I sampled their current concoction and can say it is a faithful version of the kind you get in Beaumont.
He makes a batch of links by mixing/grinding a cut of beef known as inside round with beef-fat trimmings in an approximately 4:1 ratio. Spices are added, and the mixture is stuffed into a pork casing and smoked for several hours. Mason diverges somewhat from the original Beaumont version in that he doesn’t use fresh garlic and skips the beef casing.
This isn’t unusual in Houston, where pork casing has traditionally been used. In Beaumont, where beef casings are the norm, the sausage can actually be hard to chew through, and some connoisseurs actually end up squeezing out the beef-andfat filling onto bread or a cracker, similar to boudin.
Mason’s casing is more “snappy” — and oozes with the red molten fat for which these links are known. According to Mason’s father, King, there’s an old saying about these links: “If they don’t squirt on your shirt, then they’re not a real link.”
Fortunately, the links at Lonestar are the real deal, and you’d better bring a bib.