Holmes Smokehouse Pecan smoked sausage

Here is a treat!
Pecan-smoked sausages are hard to find, so it was a big surprise to see a Texas-made, pecan-smoked sausage in a Fort Lauderdale, Fl. Publix Super Market.

This is a Holmes Smokehouse sausage.  Founded in 1970 by Luvine Holmes, this little sausage company is based in Rosenberg, Texas.  That's on the old U.S. 90 Highway that got bypassed by Interstate 10.  Rosenberg is a small town, but it's not far  from Houston, and a lot of hard work by the family eventually made Holmes products (they make a wide range of meat products) a hit in the big Bayou City.

Holmes Smokehouse distributes its products in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, so it really was a surprise to find Publix carrying it.  I had not seen it there before, and Florida is apparently a test market for Holmes.  We'll see if it gains any traction, but I'll make sure to ask for it again at my local Publix if it disappears from the shelf.

Holmes Smokehouse Pecan Smoked Sausage from Rosenberg

This sausage is good for any meal time -- breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Right after I opened the package, I cut a three-inch section and put it on medium heat to grill while I chopped green onion, orange bell pepper and white mushrooms.

I added a little butter to one side of the skillet and lightly grilled the vegetables for less than two minutes.  I don't like to cook vegetables too long. I want them al dente (firm but not fresh out of the produce section crunchy).

I then stirred in an egg for a scrambled vegetable omelet.

I got a slice of New York style rye and grilled that on both sides, then I cut the bread in three sections, (think finger food).

Something I noticed about this Holmes sausage is it could take the heat for a long time. I had sliced it across the center, to it cooked from the skin side and the center.  It is common for the interior meat to burn on a skillet surface, so I am used to keeping a close eye on that side.  That did not happen with this sausage and I left it there quite a while.

That was a pleasant surprise.  I'm assuming it tolerated the heat better because it had a higher fat content?  But it did not run grease on the skillet surface the way I usually see grease run, and it does not have the kind of fat marbling that I've seen in other sausages, so I really don't have a good answer.

A single service is described as 2 ounces on the packaging. That is 16 grams, or 25 percent of content.  This is not a pure pork sausage.  The protein content is described as pork, beef and concentrated soy.

Pecan smoked sausage with omelette

Buen provecho!

Blood sausage and alternate realities

If you have never had blood sausage and do not know what it is about, this is a sausage that can really mess with your expectations.
Blood sausage, referred to as morcilla in Latin America and blood pudding in Ireland, is sold in Latino groceries and some mainstream supermarkets with heavy Hispanic traffic. It's not a food item Mexicans have adopted, but other Latin peoples have, especially the Argentinians.
There are some brands that come up from Miami, and San Antonio (to my surprise) has a supplier -- GauchoGourmet.com sells Mr. Tango, a brand I've seen in Florida.
Blood sausage is sold in the refrigerated meat section or butcher shop of a grocery, but it has no meat to speak of. Most of the content is cereal, usually rice or oatmeal. There are spices, but the main ingredient is blood. Depending on the source and the audience, this could be pork, goat or beef blood. Check the label. If it is sold as an Argentinian style, it's beef blood.
European styles use pork blood.
The cereal is soaked with blood and packed into an edible intestine (sausage casing). It is served as an appetizer or as a side to a protein. You steam or oven cook it for about 20 minutes.

As presented here, the blood sausage was used as a topping on a plate of spaghetti.  After leaving the links in the oven for 20 minutes, we mixed them into a skillet where we had mushrooms and onions cooking in olive oil and a couple of dashes of balsamic vinegar.

We then topped this with fresh chopped green onions.

I have to say it was not a satisfying meal. My son prepared the dish on the assumption that the blood sausage was our protein. Even though we knew it was mostly cereal.

We had an unrealistic expectation that the blood would somehow compensate for that feeling you get of biting into meat. But there is no discernible meat. It's mushy and the iron taste of the blood can be overwhelming.

I did a bit more research and decided we didn't use enough onions and we should have had another meat protein. One site I visited had it served with chunks of ham. Another site had it served as a garnish atop a slice of white chicken breast and topped with fried slices of apple and bits of fresh serrano pepper.

Okay! So, lesson learned. Don't expect to fill up on blood sausage. Use it as an appetizer or garnish, or as a side to your main dish.

Finding some Mexican in Georgia

Norcross, Ga., a northwestern suburb of Atlanta, is home to Ole Mexican Foods.

Living in the South Florida communities of Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, my first introduction to Ole Mexican Foods was La Banderita corn tortillas.

If you're in the Southeastern United States, La Banderita is the most common white corn tortilla brand. The major grocery chains like Publix and Winn Dixie do not carry any other brand that is produced this close to Florida.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but the very Latino communities of South Florida depend on most of their Hispanic food items from New York City, New Jersey and Norcross, Ga. There are some items tailored to South American-based communities that get made in Miami or Opa-Locka, but nothing in the Mexican-style.

Ole Mexican Foods' Chorizo Fino Sausage is a standard Mexican-style chorizo. It is ground very fine, so it is easy to break up in the skillet. It doesn't taste as good as the premium Texas-based Mexican chorizos, but it's not a premium chorizo. Nevertheless, it is definitely suitable if you're living on the East Coast.

It does have some shrinkage, but not so much that you end up with nothing but grease. On a scale of one to five stars, I'd give it a respectable three.

I do wish these chorizo makers would dispense with the "natural spices" description on the ingredients list. I'm assuming it has no cayenne. But I compensate with the near unanimous overuse of paprika in East Coast chorizos by adding cayenne and finely chopped fresh poblano pepper. Now we're talking Mexican!

Here is an excerpt on the history of Ole Mexican Foods from their website:

The story of Veronica Moreno and OLÉ Mexican Foods reads like a tale of the American dream realized. Her drive and devotion to her quality products have propelled OLÉ to a level of success few could hope for. From a humble start, Veronica relied on her will to succeed and her devotion to providing authentic tortillas to an eager and growing market. Her family played a big part in that journey, and today they have critical roles in the company. She was supported by them when things were at their toughest. Once when the budget was especially tight, her ten-year-old made the sage comment, “Well, if we don’t get sick this will work.” And work it certainly has! Today, OLÉ Mexican foods is one of the largest tortilla manufacturers in America.

"Mexican Hot Sausage" (not!)

There's something in the Latino groceries of Broward County in Florida that is labelled Ranchero Chorizo Mexicano Hot Sausage, and it is manufactured by National Packing Corp. in Bronx, NY.

The listed ingredients, in order, include: pork, water, salt, guajillo hot peppers, jalapeno peppers, oregano, paprika, soy protein concentrate, annato, spices, sodium phosphate, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite.

There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to start.  How about this: Don't buy it!

One serving is one 4-ounce link and it has 810 mg of salt.  Maybe that should have been my first clue.  If you need that much salt to make 4 ounces of pork sausage palatable, there's something wrong with your recipe.

The angry Mexican in the sombrero is not a flattering depiction of the culture, but I could overlook that if this was actually Mexican chorizo.  It is nothing of the kind.  This is a cooked sausage.  Mexican chorizo is  raw and you cook it at home.

And the spice blend is completely crazy.

I honestly do not know what this is supposed to be or what the inventor was thinking.  National Packing Corp. has no website that I can find in Google, so they're no help.

My best guess is someone knew something about making Spanish chorizo, which can have paprika as a spice, and thought if they added guajillo and jalapeno peppers to some knock-off Spanish-style recipe that it would pass for Mexican something-something.

And it has oregano! WTF? It's like the inventor couldn't decide whether to go Spanish-style, Italian-style or Mexican, so he/she decided to mash them altogether and hope for the best. This is the opposite of the best.

By the way, annato is seed that is just used for coloring.  Hence, the orange color.

It just tastes wrong. And there's too much paprika. How bad is it? I could smell the paprika in my urine.

I don't know what to do with the two links I still have. Don't let this happen to you.

Uncle John's Pride: country style sausages from Tampa

Some Florida grocers carry select items in the Uncle John's Pride product line.
I haven't found a better sausage plant based in Florida. And outside of a few regional shops that sell only to customers in their neighborhood, I suspect there isn't one.

Uncle John's Pride comes from Crofton and Sons Inc. in Tampa, Fl. This is also home to the Bean Brothers, L & D Meats, and the Peppino's Fresh Sausage brands - none of which I have tried, yet.

The Crofton family has been making Uncle John's Pride for over 30 year. In 1994, Bean Bros. merged with Crofton and Sons, bringing into the company a brand that had been made since 1922 from an old Tennessee family recipe.

Uncle John's Pride is a hickory smoked pork sausage that comes in mild, hot, and jalapeno. The Croftons also offer smoked pork tails, neck bones, hocks, and smoked turkey wings and drumsticks.

I don't know of any grocer, however, that carries their full product line. Publix will carry some of them.

I purchased a Mild Country sausage, and  it turned out to be a fairly good buy. The ground pork appears to be extruded finer than Texas-style sausages, which are generally chunkier. But it's not as fine or homogenous as, say, a hotdog. They've settled somewhere in the middle where the meat still has a slightly coarse texture, but it is more tender when chewed.

There are two simple meals shown here. One is a sampler-style dinner plate of baked beans with lightly grilled sections of sausage, and very lightly grilled sections of sweet red pepper and yellow onion.

I'm a fan of grilled onion, but if you're not, switch that out with some other veggie. There's no bread or rice with this. I figured the baked beans have more than enough carbs as it is.

The second plate is a breakfast plate that uses the sausage as a traditional meat side to the main entree, a serving of pancakes. These pancakes have an unusual color and texture because I added graded carrot to the batter.

It's topped with nectar from the agave, a healthy substitute for honey from bees.

The mild hickory smoked sausage really does make an excellent breakfast sausage. We usually get served breakfast patty sausages that have a strong (I would say overpowering) sage flavor. I do recommend you give it a try, if it is available in your area.

Enjoy!

Singletree Farms Polish Smoked Sausage

J&B Sausage Co. (also known as J Bar B) in Waelder, Texas produces Singletree Farms Polish Smoked Sausage.

This isn't their best product. I have doubts that I would even call it sausage. To their credit, I should mention that J Bar B also makes product for Earl Campbell, who puts out a spicy cajun style sausage I like in cajun rices.

This Polish smoked sausage, however, isn't really anything more than a long hotdog. If you need something to put in a footlong hotdog bun, this ought to do the trick.

It's quite a stretch, though, to call it Polish smoked sausage, especially in Texas where people know what Polish smoked sausage is. This is a hotdog. It tastes like a hotdog and it include chicken, pork and beef products. The chicken, and the notation that it's "skinless" is a dead giveaway that it's a hotdog.

I usually offer a recipe for some dish to make with a sausage I'm reviewing. But I will trust that you know what to do with a hotdog.