Chicago Tribune
10-10-07
Frankophiles celebrate sausage
By Robin Mather Jenkins
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
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 in Chicago.
The alliance, modeled on the successful Southern Foodways Alliance, will
explore and celebrate Midwestern foods.
The daylong symposium held Sept. 15 featured a series of panels on various
sausage traditions. Speakers included Barbara Olson, a retired hot dog-stand
manager; Leonard Slotkowski Jr., grandson of Joseph Slotkowski, who founded
Chicago's famous Slotkowski Polish sausage; and Peter Engler, a research
scientist and expert on the heretofore little-known South Side of Chicago
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 Tony
Packo's Hungarian sausage from Toledo, Ohio, to brats to Chicago dogs with the
requisite seven toppings over 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 making sausage. He 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 qualify
as sausage.
Randy Ream, a small-scale sausagemaker whose Ream's Elburn Meat Market is
in Elburn, Ill., 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 long-
time "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 to find fullgrown 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 in general was the "world's first convenience food."
To gain more information on sausage traditions, the Alliance is seeking stories
from the public about favorite hot dog stands and varieties of hot dogs. Visit its
website at greatermidwestfoodways.com.