ZEST A Southeast Texas barbecue tradition continues at Gerard’s
all-beef sausages. Known as “juicy links” or just “links,” they are made with beef, beef fat, garlic, paprika and other spices in a beef casing.
Beaumont and Port Arthur are two of the last places in Southeast Texas where beef links are made from scratch by barbecue joints like Gerard’s, Broussard’s Links Plus Ribs and Patillo’s Bar-BQ. A few places in Houston still make them from scratch, including Powell Bar-B-Q in Sunnyside, which uses a recipe by legendary pitmaster Harry Green. Green reportedly got his recipe from Matt Garner, who came to Houston from Beaumont in the 1920s.
Joseph Gerard died in 1987, and the business was taken over by his son. Today, George Gerard works the colossal brick barbecue pit that his father built while his mother, Marie Gerard, fills orders.
In addition to beef links, another traditional Southeast Texas barbecue dish served at Gerard’s is “pork bones.” These are pork neck bones which are seasoned and smoked. Although originating from Southern cooking traditions, “pork bones” are a specialty of Southeast Texas. In addition to Gerard’s, Comeaux’s Bar-B-Que in Port Arthur also has them on the menu.
According to George, it’s getting harder to find never-frozen pork neck bones needed to make the dish. Only one distributor in Beaumont still carries the untrimmed product that leaves succulent bits of pork meat still attached to the bones.
Today, George and Marie Gerard mostly sell links, pork bones, pork ribs and chopped beef sandwiches to their customers who still come from the South End and Pear Orchard neighborhoods. Although they have many loyal customers, it’s still a challenge to compete with newer barbecue joints, which use processed, readymade ingredients. Making beef links from scratch is an hours-long, physically demanding task. Working on a decades-old brick pit takes far more work than the electric barbecue cookers that other places use.
One of the menu items at Gerard’s is a sweet potato pie that Marie Gerard makes from scratch. It’s another item that is a memory from her Louisiana childhood. And, like just about everything else at Gerard’s — from the decades-old building to the old vinyl booths and the big brick pit — these traditions tell the tale of Southeast Texas barbecue. jcreid@jcreidtx.com twitter.com/jcreidtx