Chicago Tribune
09-26-07
Event stuffed with all things sausage
By Robin Mather Jenkins, Tribune staff reporter
More than 100 "frankophiles" turned out for "Stuffed: A Journey of Midwestern
Sausage Traditions," the recent inaugural event of the Greater Midwest
Foodways Alliance, at Kendall College.
The alliance, modeled on the successful Southern Foodways Alliance, will
explore and celebrate all Midwestern foods.
The daylong symposium held Sept. 15 featured a series of panels on various
sausage traditions, including Barbara Olson, a retired hot dog-stand manager;
Leonard Slotkowski Jr., grandson of Joseph Slotkowski, who founded Maxwell
Street's famous Slotkowski Polish sausage; and Peter Engler, a research
scientist and expert on the heretofore little-known South Side specialty called a
"mother-in-law" (a Tom Tom brand tamale on a bun or in a cup, served with chili
over the top, chopped onions and mustard).
After a lunch of sausages ranging from Flint, Mich.-style "dry Coneys" to Toledo's
Tony Packo's Hungarian sausage to brats to good ol' Chicago dogs with the
requisite seven toppings and Vienna Beef franks, the sausage-sated settled in for
an afternoon of more panel discussions.
Robert E. Rust, a professor emeritus of animal sciences at Iowa State
University, talked about the art and science of sausagemaking. Culinary
historian Bruce Kraig, a member of the Foodways Alliance's founding board,
called Rust "the god of sausage" in his introduction. Rust had some fascinating
insights into the best of wurst. He noted that the most closely guarded secrets in
the sausage industry aren't the mixture of meats or the type of casing but the
ingredients in the spice mixtures that flavor the sausage. Technically, Rust said,
sausage is any ground meat -- which means that hamburgers, too, qualify as
sausage.
Randy Ream, a small-scale sausagemaker whose Ream's Elburn Meat Market is
in Elburn, about 45 miles west of Chicago, talked about the expenses and
challenges of setting up a small processing company. The audience laughed
when Ream acknowledged that he has been inducted into the Cured Meats Hall
of Fame (the 2000 nominee), sponsored by the American Association of Meat
Processors, but many seemed surprised when he noted that there are no
sausagemaking schools in the United States.
Bob Schwartz, senior vice-president of Vienna Beef Ltd., talked about the
passion that sausagemakers bring to their work, and recalled that Vienna's longtime "sausagemeister" spent five years training his replacement. He said that
Vienna hot dogs get their flavor and their texture from their primary ingredient -bull meat -- but added that artificial insemination has made it harder and harder
to find full-grown bulls to use.
During the panel on "Sausage Across the Midwest," Trudy Knauss Paradis,
author of "Milwaukee Germans: Their History, Their Food," described the
fanaticism of bratwurst fans in Wisconsin as "almost reaching religiosity." She
also noted that sausage was the "world's first convenience food."
To gain more information on sausage traditions, the Alliance is seeking personal
stories from the public about favorite hot dog stands and varieties of hot dogs.
Visit its Web site at greatermidwestfoodways.com.