Czech Style sausage found in Texas

[Track]

Hey folks,

I grew up outside of Houston but have lived in the Northeast for the last couple of decades. One of the things I miss from that area is kolache, specifically the sausage ones. The same style sausage was also featured "on a stick" at the area Czech Fest. I'd love to recreate it and have even gone so far as to purchase some from a Texas company and have it overnighted to Vermont so that I can wrap my head around it.

Here's what I've got:

-It's a pretty basic pork & beef sauage. The ingredients listed on the package from Lad's are: Pork, Beef, Water, Salt, Soy Flour, Nonfat Dry Milk Powder, Spices, Garlic & Sodium Nitrite. Pretty basic, right? But I really have no idea what sort of ratio to start with. It was definitely not spicy like a "hot link". Thinking back, I remember being able to see coarsely ground pepper through the casing, which had a very noticeable snap. The grind was fairly course as well. It wasn't like a Polish kielbasa at all...

-It seems that these are generally smoked over pecan wood. It's not something I can typically find here in the Northeast, but maybe there's a decent alternative? Any idea what the smoking technique is for these? I vaguely remember them coming off of a BBQ pit sort of setup vs. a grill or griddle... Not sure if they were smoked in a smokehouse prior to being heated up or they were cooked and smoked at the same time on a BBQ pit.

Googleing Texas sausage formulas typically turns out the Elgin-style links which I have to assume are similar given the blend of German and Eastern European influences in this area of Texas, but certainly not exactly what I'm looking for. This sausage was peppery, but mild and might've had a touch of garlic but not so much that it was overwhelming.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance, you guys rock!

[vagreys]

Hmm. Doing a little research, kolache seems to refer to the dough. This is basically a stuffed roll variation. The filling varies: traditional fruit, and fruit and cheese, to combinations of sausage, cheese, onions, and jalapeños popular in Texas. So, your options for sausage are a little more varied. Are you saying you specifically want to reproduce the Lad's sausage for this sausage roll?

[Track]

Yes, that style of sausage is the most common used in the kolache. My neighbor growing up used to make kolache and often used sausage from Lad's. That's what I'm trying to reproduce, not so much the actual pastry. Sorry if that wasn't clear in the first post.

[vagreys]

Ok. What you have from Lad's is a Tex-Czech, pecan-smoked, pork-beef klobase. Without knowing how Lad's sausages taste, it's hard to say what "spices" might mean in the ingredient list, but I'll give it a shot.

[polka]

Track, and Tom
I would like to contribute to this thread. I also wanted to add the few recipes I have to the heritage recipe section.

I have 6 sausage recipes from the Wilber Nebraska (1963 or 1964) Czech Days cookbook. The Klobasa recipes (2) would shed light on the spices, I would suppose. Although the Czechs of Texas have eastern Bohemia and Moravian roots (more Hungarian and/or Polish influences<?>), this book was comprised by western Bohemians with closer ties to Germany and Austria.

Do you think this would add to the thread, and I wanted to submit personally to Tom, first, before adding to the archive recipes -- just in case they would be duplicates, and unnecessary. I don't have instant messenger.

thanks folks

Rex W. Ulmer
(raised around Germans and Czechs in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska)

[vagreys]

Hi, Rex. Welcome to the forum! You're welcome to post recipes. If they are from a source, like the book you mentioned, please cite the author, title, publisher and year, if possible, so we have a good source citation - you never know when someone else will want to go looking for a copy! Looking forward to seeing your recipes. I'm working on a Texas country sausage for someone, and thought I'd try to leverage it for this question, too. Your recipes will undoubtedly give us some insights. I'd love to see whatever you care to share.

[wheels]

Welcome Polka, I too look forward to seee the recipes.

Phil

[polka]

Okay Fellas
Here is the Czech Style Sausage found in Wilber, Nebraska.
Taken from "Kucharka Ceska," published by
Past Chief's Association of the Pythian Sisters of Wilber, Nebr., about 1964

Klobasy - ( klOE-bossy )
This is their 'generic' term for sausage, like Kolache is their generic term for 'pastry.'

6 quarts boiled pork, ground
3 quarts boiled beef, ground
3 quarts sliced white bread
1 quart sweet cream
2 Tbsp salt
1/2 tsp mace
1 tsp pepper
1 cup wine
1 Tbsp lemon rind/zest chopped fine

Mix thoroughly; stuff into weiner type (sheep) casings.

This might be like the Bohemian "Cream Sausage" that some folks in Chicago used to buy.
Hope this helps
Rex

[polka]

And then, from the same book, there is a second Klobasy recipe -- which resembles salami or bologna to me

25 pounds of meat - three parts beef to 1 part pork
1 cup salt
7 1/2 Tbsp white pepper
2 tsp ground coriander
1 1/4 Tbsp ground nutmeg
3/4 Tbsp marjoram
1/2 Tbsp ground celery seed
3 cloves garlic, mashed
1/4 tsp saltpeter dissolved in 1 cup water

(These Czechs I know in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska use a lot of lemon/citron , and nutmeg/mace as flavorings in their savories, and sweets)

Sprinkle chilled meat with all the ingredients except saltpeter.
Run thru coarse plate.
Add saltpeter solution, and mix thoroughly.
Re-grind using fine plate.
Add enough cold water and mix thoroughly until the mixture has the proper consistency for stuffing.
Stuff into beef or muslin casings.

Rex

[SoTexSurveyor]

I am a half-Czech Texan whose family hails from the area in and around Hallettsville, Texas. My great grandfather was a butcher who emigrated from the Moravian region of Czechoslovakia so I am lucky to have taken part in the entire butchering process from a very early age. Part of that process for us is making smoked sausage using a recipe brought from the "old country". One of the most delicious uses of the sausage is klobasniki (sausage kolaches).
We still get together once a year for "sausage making" and by the end of a long weekend we generally have made about a thousand pounds of smoked links. Our sausage is 100% pork (we use Boston butts - a perfect fat/lean ratio) and we now use a spice mix we purchase from a meat market in Shiner, Texas. It's so much easier than mixing the spices ourselves and the flavor is indistinguishable from our family recipe. The sausage is smoked for 8 - 12 hours using live oak and hickory.
The spice mix is not complicated - a combination of salt, coarsely ground black pepper and garlic - but at the moment I can't recall the exact ratio. I believe that the grind of the meat is just as important as the spices. We double grind with a 3/8" plate, mixing in the spices between grinds, and this yields a medium-coarse texture. The spice mix we buy in Shiner also contains a packet of "pink salt" (6% sodium nitrite) which can be added at your discretion.
I cannot for the life of me recall the name of the store from which we buy the spices but will ask a relative and post it here soon.

[wheels]

So TexSurveyor, welcome. With your post being an addition to an older thread, I seem to have missed it.

It sounds like you have a wealth of sausage-making knowledge. Please tell us more. I'm in the UK and would love to hear more about the sausages your families sausages.

Phil

[bkleinsmid]

SoTexSurveyor..........I agree with Wheels. I too would like to see and try some old world sausage recipes.
Thanks in advance.....

Brad

[vinner]

Here is my Czech style sausage, from around Ft. Bend County, Texas

5 Lbs. Pork Butt
5 Lbs. beef chuck or venison
4 Ozs Kosher Salt
1 Oz Fresh coarse ground black pepper (or more to taste)
1/4 Oz cayenne
1/4 Oz pink salt (cure No. 1)
1 1/2 ozs finely minced fresh garlic

Mix meat and seasonings. Coarsely grind. mix until pasty. Stuff into hog casings . Refrigerate overnight. Hang and smoke over light pecan smoke at 150 F for 10 hours. Refrigerate or freeze.

BE SURE TO COOK FULLY BEFORE EATING.

[franklinfrank]

Reviving a dead thread...

I feel like the original poster is referring to Špekáček.

via kolarsky.com

"The Czech contribution to the sausage world is the "Špekáček". It it made of finely ground mixture of pork and beef, with cubes of smoked lard added to it. The name translates as the "little lard boy". The original recipe, which was first introduced at the Land Exhibit in Prague in 1891, consists of 50% lean beef, 20% lean pork, and 30% of lard, seasoned with garlic, pepper and mace. Beef-intestine casing is used, 3-4 cm in diameter, tied with a string to 5-7 cm segments.

The Špekáček is very similar to the Swiss Cervelat. Both are Brühwursts, have similar thickness, Špekáček is typically divided into short, stubby sausages, while the cervelat is made long, like salami.

...every Czech kid who has ever roasted weenies around a camp fire has vivid memories of roasting a špekáček on a stick, everything catching on fire due to the high fat content of the sausage, the stick burning off, the špekáček falling into the fire, subsequently digging the burned Špekáček out of the ashes"

[wellerjohn]

Wow, I live just down the street from LADS, got me hungry now.