Recipe: Lickety Links (Smoked Sausage) for Daisy, Omaha

Hi Daisy :-) I'm not sure that this is quite what you are looking for. The recipe is from my cookbook Texas Home Cooking by Cheryl Alters Jamison and Bill Jamison. DH and I have made smoked sausage on our grill but have never smoked it in this manner. I'm not sure why we never think of doing it while we are smoking brisket - just haven't, I guess. We did, however, eat our fair share while we lived in Texas:-) Yum!! After the recipe and all of the quotes, I have listed sources for the German sausage mentioned. The cookbook was published before computers were ubiquitous, but I did check and the two that I mention are still in business. I just couldn't find their own web site addresses. I do list addresses and phone numbers. If you do a Google search, you will find a way to order them over the internet. If it weren't as late as it is, I could probably find the web site addresses for you.

"The same German butchers who created modern Texas barbeque 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 smokey flavor. If you use precooked links, get ones that were snoked originally because they won't be in the pit long enough to absorb much smoke there. We prefer to barbeque uncooked spicy sausage, but any kind will do. The biggest hits from our pit have been an uncooked, robust Italian sausage from San Francisco, and a Texas Hill Country deer sausage mixed with some pork and red and black pepper for seasoning."

Lickety Links Serves 6

12 links (6-8 oz. each) of any sausage
Mesquite wood chips soaked in water to cover for at least a couple of hours. (My addition)

Warm the pit to 220 degrees F. Add wood chips to add flavor to the sausage (or any other meat you are smoking.) Put the sausage in it. Maintain a tenperature of 220 degrees F and cook the sausage until the skin 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 in tortilla with jalapeno mustard and slices of onion - a sandwich we call German Burrito."

"Founded in 1882, the Southside Market in Elgin is one of the oldest and best-known barbeque joints in Texas, famed for it's "hot guts" sausage. It's not exactly an elegant establishment, even in the new roadside quarters, but it's 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 to eat with their fingers."

Sources for Texas German sausage :

Hans Mueller Sausage
2459 Southwell
Dallas, Texas75220
1 (800) 777-2793; (214)241-2793
Catalogue
American Express, Mastercard, Visa

New Braunfels Smokehouse
P.O. Box 31159
New Braunfels, Texas 78131
1 (800) 537-6932; (210) 625-7316
Catalogue
American Express, Mastercard, Visa