Texas Home Cooking

by Cheryl Jamison

  1½ cups dry bread crumbs

  3 tablespoons sour cream

  1½ tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

  1 egg

  ¼ cup unsalted stock, preferably beef

  Serves 6

  Prepare the barbecue sauce, if necessary, and the mop sauce. Fire up the pit, and bring it to a temperature of 200° F to 220° F.

  In a heavy skillet sauté the onion, bell pepper, and garlic in the oil until softened. Add the pepper, cayenne, salt, and cumin, and sauté an additional 2 to 3 minutes. Spoon the vegetable mixture into a large bowl.

  Add the remaining ingredients, except the mop and barbecue sauces, and mix well with your hands. Mound the meat into a loaf pan.

  Place the loaf pan in the pit. Maintain a temperature of 200° F to 220° F during the smoking process.

  After 45 minutes, or when the meat has shrunk away from the sides of the pan, gently ease the meat loaf out of the pan and directly onto the surface of the pit's grill. Continue smoking the meat for an additional 1½ hours, dabbing it every 20 to 30 minutes with the mop sauce.

  When 30 minutes of cooking time remain, apply the barbecue sauce to the top of the meat loaf. At the end of the cooking time, remove the meat loaf from the pit. Allow it to sit for 10 minutes.

  Serve it warm, or refrigerate it to use later for sandwiches.

  Lickety Links

  The same German batchers who created modern Texas barbecue also made great link sausage, which they smoked with the brisket in the pit at the back of the meat market. Only the hardiest of home cooks today will want to grind and stuff their own sausage, but you can still get that old smoky flavor. If you use precooked links, get ones that were smoked originally because they wont be in your pit long enough to absorb much smoke there. We prefer to barbecue uncooked spicy sausage, but any kind will do. The biggest hits from our pit have been an uncooked, robust Italian sausage from San Jrancisco, and a Texas Hill Country deer sausage mixed with some pork and red and black pepper for seasoning.

  12 6- to 8-ounce links of any sausage

  Serves 6

  Warm the pit to 220° F, and put the sausage in it. Maintain a temperature of 220° F until the skin of the sausage looks ready to pop, which will take 30 minutes or more with precooked links and 2 hours plus with uncooked ones. In timing the latter, it's better to err on the side of caution. Cut one of the sausages open to check for doneness before eating any of them.

  * * *

  We often serve smoked sausage wrapped in a warm flour tortilla with jalapeño mustard and slices of onion—a sandwich we call a German Burrito.

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  * * *

  Founded in 1882, the Southside Market in Elgin is one of the oldest and best-known barbecue joints in Texas, famed for its "hot guts" sausage. It's not exactly an elegant establishment, even in the new roadside quarters, but its owner, Ernest Bracewell, Jr., made a nod to the niceties in 1983 by offering forks for the first time. He explained to a concerned reporter that the restaurant was getting too many people from the North who had never learned how to eat with their fingers.

  * * *

  No Baloney Bologna

  The second most popular sausage in the United States, after frankfurters, bologna absorbs smoke flavor wonderfully.

  1 2-pound bologna sausage

  ½ cup Lone Star Dry Rub ([>])

  Cover the bologna thoroughly with the dry rub. Place the meat in a plastic bag, and leave it in the refrigerator for 4 hours or overnight.

  Smoke the bologna at 200° F to 220° F for 2 hours. Serve it sliced in sandwiches with chowchow, barbecue sauce, or mustard and onions.

  * * *

  Houston barbecue master Jim Goode based his sausage on an old family recipe developed by Czech settlers in Texas. He favors a coarse style, saying, "You should be able to still pick out chunks of meat. I don't like a sausage to look like a wienie."

  * * *

  * * *

  If you enjoy wacky, outrageous people, or just want to learn more about "Q," attend a barbecue cook-off. Much more than a cooking contest, a good cook-off is a circus of characters and craziness. The biggest festival in Texas falls in February at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, where you'll always find Pitt's and Spitt's pits featured. Competition warms up in late summer, when the heat seems to drive people amok at Taylor's International Barbecue Cook-off, Meridian's National Championship Barbecue Cookoff, and Nacogdoches' Do Dat Barbecue celebration. If none of these affairs fits your schedule, you can find hundreds of similar ones all across the state and the country, even as far from brisket land as Alaska and Wisconsin.

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  * * *

  In A Yankee in German America, Vera Flach described life on a German hill country farm in the 1920s, when she moved to Texas from back East. Making sausage at home was one of the biggest cultural shocks. "Everywhere I looked there was meat. Mixed and reground, it was in dishpans, crocks, roasting pans—and sure, wash-tubs... Lard, too, was everywhere—gallon ice cream cartons, two-pound coffee cans, big crocks, little crocks.... While the meat was being mixed, someone (good grief, not me!) was sent to the river with a washtub of entrails. There they were washed ... and brought back to be sausage jackets." A half century after her first experience she said, "In all the years I have never eaten a bite of sausage after I saw it made." If you want to try making sausage yourself, consult the authoritative book by Bruce Aldells and Denis Kelly, Hot Links And Country Flavors.

  * * *

  Sweet Potatoes with Honey-Mint Butter

  We don't stoke up our pit just to smoke vegetables—or bologna for that matter—but once it's going we usually fill up the cooking space with an assortment of goodies, including sweet potatoes almost every time. They seem meant for smoking, whether you eat them plain or with something extra, as we do here.

  4 small sweet potatoes

  Oil, preferably canola or corn

  HONEY-MINT BUTTER

  4

  to

  6 tablespoons unsalted butter

  2 teaspoons honey

  2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint

  Salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste

  Mint sprigs, optional, for garnish

  Serves 4

  Bring the pit to a steady temperature between 180° F to 220° F. Prick the potatoes well in several spots, and rub a light film of vegetable oil over them. Place the potatoes in the pit, and cook them until they are soft, about 2 hours. The potatoes can sit for 15 minutes before serving, or up to an hour if you wrap them in foil.

  While the potatoes cook, prepare the Honey-Mint Butter: Melt the butter and honey together in a small pan. Add the mint, and then the salt and pepper. Rewarm the butter, if necessary, just before eating.

  To serve the sweet potatoes, slit open the top of each one and drizzle with the Honey-Mint Butter.

  * * *

  Many sweet potato recipes come out better with pit-cooked sweet potatoes.

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  SMOKING ON A COVERED GRILL

  The drawing shows how to use a Weber kettle grill for slow smoking. The first step is to soak wood chips or chunks in water, the former for 30 minutes and the latter for 3 hours. We like a combination of both chips and chunks. Prepare some charcoal, and place a metal pan, half full of water, on the lower grill. The hot charcoal goes alongside, directly over one of the bottom vents. Put the wet wood on the coals, and set the food on the upper grill above the water pan and under the top vent of the closed lid. The only thing not visible in the illustration may be the most critical element, the ten-dollar grill thermometer next to the meat that lets you know when you're exceeding the low temperatures needed for real barbecue. You regulate the heat mainly with two key vents, the one on top and the vent below covered by the charcoal, opening them a notch to go up and closing them to head down. Leave the other bottom vents shut.

  Smoking on a Weber grill takes practice and patience. We get the best results from items that occupy less than half t
he grill space and take under two hours to cook. The World's Greatest Hamburger ([>]) is a good starting point for a novice. With food that takes more than an hour to cook, be sure to replenish the wood chips occasionally to keep the smoke coming. In some cases you'll also have to add more coals, preferably ones preheated in a charcoal chimney; they'll fit through the gap between the top grill handle and the kettle rim.

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  Smokin' Pepper Salad

  We often fix this for lunch when we're barbecuing all day. It also makes a good side dish with smoked meats.

  3 large bell peppers, preferably 1 each of red, yellow, and green

  1 small onion

  1 fresh New Mexican or poblano green Chile

  1 fresh jalapeño or chile güero (banana pepper) or 1 to 2 serranos

  3 large garlic cloves

  1 tablespoon canola or corn oil

  1 tablespoon flavored oil, such as garlic or roasted safflower

  1 tablespoon minced cilantro

  ¼

  to

  ½ teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted and ground

  Red wine vinegar to taste

  Salt to taste

  Serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as a side dish

  Bring the pit to a steady cooking temperature between 180° F to 220° F.

  Rub each of the bell peppers, the onion, the green chile, the jalapeño, and the garlic with enough canola or corn oil to coat their surfaces lightly. Arrange them on the pit's grill, and smoke them as far from the heat as possible until they are well-softened, about 30 minutes for the garlic and 75 minutes for everything else.

  Put the bell peppers, green chile, and jalapeño in a plastic bag to steam. Remove the skins from the garlic and onion, chop them fine, and transfer them to a medium serving bowl. Remove the peppers from the bag, and pull the skin off each. Slice the bell peppers and green chiles into thin ribbons, and add them to the garlic and onion. Mince the jalapeño, and add about half of it to the bowl.

  Stir in the flavored oil, the cilantro, the cumin, and a bit of vinegar and salt, and taste. Add more of the jalapeño or the other seasonings as you like.

  Serve the salad warm or chilled.

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  Pit Pointer

  Barbecue books are right when they tell you not to use a fork to move meat around, but they err in suggesting tongs as the best approach. You point a pair of those overgrown tweezers at a 10-pound brisket and the poor pincers are going to wilt in your hand. What you need are some nifty neoprene gloves, available at some barbecue supply stores (see "Mail-Order Sources"). They can handle anything and they clean quickly.

  * * *

  Cinnamon-Scented Squash

  This is another option for lunch while you're tending the pit, or it can be refrigerated and reheated a day or two later for a side dish.

  1 good-size acorn squash

  1 teaspoon oil, preferably canola or corn

  CINNAMON BUTTER

  4

  to

  6 tablespoons unsalted butter

  2 teaspoons dark brown sugar

  1 teaspoon ground canela (Mexican cinnamon) or cinnamon

  ½ teaspoon ground dried red chile, preferably New Mexican or Ancho

  Serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as a side dish

  Heat the pit for cooking, bringing it to a temperature of 180° F to 220° F.

  Cut the squash in half, but don't remove the seeds (they will help keep it moist during the smoking). Rub the oil over the cut surfaces of the squash and on the outside. Place the squash halves, cut side down, on the pit's grill, and smoke them until they are tender, about 2 hours.

  Prepare the Cinnamon Butter while the squash cooks: Melt the butter in a small pan or dish, and stir in the sugar, cinnamon, and chile. Keep the butter warm until needed.

  When the squash is done, remove it from the pit. Scrape the seeds out of each squash half. If you are serving four, cut the halves into quarters. Spoon some of the Cinnamon Butter over each piece of squash.

  * * *

  Pit Pointer

  You regulate temperature in the pit three ways. First in importance is the size and intensity of your lire. In an efficient, well-constructed pit you seldom need more than three logs burning at once, or more than a small flame going. The air-intake control is a close second in significance. You open it to increase the draft—which stirs the flame and raises the heat—or close it to dampen the blaze and reduce the temperature. The outtake adjustment on the smoke stack is most useful in reigning back a fire that's gotten too hot. Unless this happens, leave it fully open to keep the smoke circulating freely.

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  While-You-Wait Cheese

  This is the barbecue version of that wonderful Mexican dish queso fun-dido (baked cheese). When you're beginning to get hungry in the late afternoon and it's still hours before dinner, pop this in the pit.

  12-ounce piece medium cheddar or Monterey jack cheese

  1

  to

  2 teaspoons Cajun seasoning or Lone Star Dry Rub ([>])

  1 pickled or fresh jalapeño, sliced into thin rings

  Serves 2 to 8, depending on hunger levels

  Bring the pit to a steady cooking temperature between 180° F to 220° F.

  Place the cheese in a small baking dish. Sprinkle it with the seasoning and the jalapeño. Put the cheese in the smoker as far away from the heat as possible. Smoke the cheese until it is melted through, about 1½ hours. Avoid cooking it any longer, or it will become rubbery.

  Serve the cheese immediately with warm flour tortillas, cut into quarters.

  Tex-Mex Treasures

  With the opening in 1887 of the first Tex-Mex restaurant, Maria's Old. Borunda Cafe, the culinary history of Texas emerged from the dark ages and entered the renaissance.... Along with chicken-fried steak and barbecue, Tex-Mex forms the Holy Trinity of our state's official cuisine. It is multileveled and richly dimensional, giving us taste, nutrition, history.... On the darker side it is responsible for unfortunate aberrations like Taco Bell and chili cookoff warfare.

  Richard West, "Our Lady of the Taco," Texas Monthly

  The sad truth is, outside Texas the fast-food franchisers have hijacked the proud Tex-Mex heritage and turned the food into big-bucks kiddie grub. Few folks in Oregon, Kansas, or New York ever ate at the Old Borunda, or any other authentic Tex-Mex restaurant, but almost everyone has had a plastic taco or two. Many have compared such a meal with one at a trendy nouvelle Southwestern-style restaurant—the kind now found all over the country—and concluded that Tex-Mex was riding the tailgate of regional cooking.

  Not so. Tula Borunda Gutierrez would have shown them different a century ago in her Marfa cafe, and so could scads of cooks today in kitchens all over the state. When Tex-Mex is made right it's a bounty of flavors with the depth of bedrock. It may not be high on the scale of subtlety, but it'll have your taste buds dancing the fandango.

  Chili Gravy and Yellow Cheese

  The differences among Tex-Mex, Mexican, and other related styles of cooking are far from precise or definitive. They are in the kind of territory Texans love, where science yields to yarns. One night at San Antonio's Mi Tierra, when we might have been a bit downstream of the margarita flow, we had this vision about the birth of Tex-Mex cooking.

  In the beginning God gave Texans the secret of chili gravy. No one in Mexico, New Mexico, California, or even the Garden of Eden knew about this sauce then, and they don't now. For eons Texans didn't do anything with the revelation except adapt it for bowls of red, a reasonable idea but hardly the whole enchilada. Finally the state's legendary lady hero, the Yellow Rose of Texas, shacked up with Santa Anna—only to help Sam Houston win Texas independence, of course. As part of the deal she got a few bites of El Presidente's Mexican combination plate. Ol' Yeller knew immediately the real purpose of chili gravy, and she passed along the discovery to friends such as Tula Borunda Gutierrez, Joe T. Garcia, and a Wisconsin farmer who dyed his cheese in her honor in thanks. Tex-Mex jumped to life
when the chili gravy and the yellow cheese first seeped into a combo of enchiladas, tacos, tamales, rice, and beans.

  They had all the basics in Mexico the whole time, but they used queso bianco (white cheese) and mild sauces without beef. You get a whole different perspective on the Battle of San Jacinto if you picture the Yellow Rose sitting around Santa Anna's tent wondering where the beef is. She knew where to find it, and so did other Texans, who ultimately began stuffing it up their tacos, enchiladas, and even tamales in place of Mexican pork, cheese, and chicken.

  Meanwhile the independent-minded paisanos of New Mexico refused to be annexed or conquered by Texas. That left them without the beef too, though they compensated pretty well with a hardy sauce of pure chiles. The Spanish-speaking settlers of California went a different direction. Under the leadership of Friar Napa, they began developing contemporary Southwestern cuisine by grafting grapevines to com stalks. In parts of Los Angeles today you still get a choice of red or white tortillas.