Jennifer Merin SULPHUR, LOUISIANA -- There’s nothing postcard pretty about the décor of The Sausage Link, a fast food café and takeaway located at 2400 E. Napoleon in this little Southwest Louisiana town, but it’s not the décor that lures folks to return to the place as frequent customers.
What keeps folk coming back for more is, in fact, the quality of The Sausage Link‘s handmade ‘boudin,’ the local Cajun version of ’blood sausage,’ that traditional dish that figures prominently in country cooking around the world.
As soon as you enter the eatery, you’re captivated by the utterly enticing aroma that emanates from the kitchen. It is a marvelously spicy bouquet -- one that downright contradicts olfactory expectations in a town named Sulphur -- that makes it impossible for you to resist peeking through that kitchen door to discover the source of that deliciously seductive tang that’s circulating through the air.
It is the boudin, for sure. And The Sausage Link’s unique recipe is recognized as one of the best in the region.
Boudin is a much favored food throughout Southwest Louisiana. Eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it‘s served up in whole links or sliced, or rolled into boudin balls that are lightly breaded and deep fried. You’ll find boudin stuffed into flakey croissants or stirred into steaming jambalaya.
There are countless varieties of boudin to be found in Southwest Louisiana, and sampling them is a popular pastime for locals and tourists alike. You’ll see that following the Boudin Trail from one eatery to another is not only a way of experiencing the joys of regional cuisine, it’s also a path to the discovery of local culture. In other words, you’ll meet a lot of fun and fascinating local characters along the way.
One thing that many Boudin Trail tourists are pleased to discover is that many modern boudin-makers -- including the The Sausage Link and other purveyors -- no longer list blood among the ingredients in their mix. These days, it’s all meat -- mostly pork, but with venison, chicken, turkey, crab, shrimp or crayfish used as tasty variations, depending upon the season or boudin-maker’s personal taste.
Traditionalists will tell you that one of the important distinguishing characteristics of Cajun boudin is the use of liver and other innards in the mix.
But The Sausage Link‘s capable and enthusiastic owner, Kevin Downs claims that many boudin-makers have dropped the ‘icky stuff’ from their recipes and now use only prime meats. That’s certainly true at his shop, and he’s happy to open that kitchen door and show you around to prove it.
Once inside The Sausage Link’s kitchen, you’ll see that there’s a daily down home ballet of culinary preparation fully in progress.
Ballet, I say, because there’s a complex choreography of production followed without mishap by many people working in a small space.
Getting back to that wonderfully enticing aroma that embraces you when you enter the shop, the actual source turns out to be a huge vat which contains -- at this particular moment -- steaming pork, whole scallions, quartered white onions and uncooked Louisiana rice.
A cook, poised to complete the melange, pulls open a quart-sized plastic ziplock packed with orange-colored spices and pours the aromatic contents into the vat. As soon as the spices hit the heated mixture of ingredients, a new set of mouthwatering scents explodes from the vat.
Exactly which spices are contained in that plastic ziplock?
The cook looks up and, with a grin, says, “I don’t know and I don’t want to know…because if I knew, Kevin might have to kill me! I just receive the packages of spices in the morning and I add them when I prepare each batch of boudin.”
Kevin chuckles and affirms. “Yeah, I have to tell you that not even my wife has my boudin recipe, which I inherited from my family. It’s locked up in the vault, of course, just in case something happens to me and she has to carry on. But otherwise, it is top secret. And, my wife has her secret recipe, too, which I do not and will never know,“ he says.
Is that typical?
Yes, and that’s an indication of just how seriously folk in Southwest Louisiana take their boudin. Recipes, handed down from generation to generation, are a source for family pride -- and sometimes feuds.
In Sulphur and the other small towns surrounding the city of Lake Charles, Southwest Lousiana’s charming urban hub, most markets and takeaways, restaurants and cafés prepare their own boudin, and customer loyalties are high. In fact, customers drive for miles, from town to town, following “The Boudin Trail” to purchase their favorite links, slices and balls.
You really can’t visit Southwest Louisiana without following the Boudin Trail. It’s just a must. In addition to The Sausage Link, two essential must munch stops are:
Cajun Cowboy’s Restaurant (1312 Gum Cove Road, Vinton, Louisiana), a fast food emporium adjacent to a gas station, where you can buy boudin that’s classified by heat -- mild to spicy -- and pick up jars of pre-mixed spices for some home cooking of your own.
Brown’s Food Center (620 Main Street, Hackberry, Louisiana), the local grocery store, where you’ll encounter freshly made and ready-to-eat over-the-counter varieties include pork or crab and crayfish, and deep fried boudin balls -- and don‘t forget the side of deep fried green beans or fried okra. And boudin jambalaya, too.
Brown‘s shelves are stocked with all the ingredients -- some prepackaged -- with which to make your own boudin at home. To develop your own secret recipe, all you have to do is change up the spices a little bit. Or not, if you find a blend you really like -- to the point of addiction, perhaps.
In the back of Brown’s amazing emoorium, refrigerated displays of fresh and frozen pork sirloin, venison, catfish, crayfish, shrimp, crab and even ‘gator, indicate another essential element of Southwest Louisiana boudin-making: all the ingredients used are local.
Back at The Sausage Link, Kevin Downs explains that many boudin-makers take pride in proclaiming that they‘ve actually raised and/or caught and prepared the meat and/or seafood they use to make their boudin.
“Actually, most of us enjoy hunting and fishing for our food. I’d say that five days of the week, most people are eating something they shot or caught. It’s our way of life. You’ll see people fishing by the side of the road, or hauling a deer they shot. That’s just typical,” says Kevin.
Actually, The Sausage Link provides hunters with the service of butchering and packaging their deer to their specifications. Behind the kitchen is an area for butchering, as well as refrigerated storage rooms and freezers, and a well-used smoke house. The service is popular with locals -- probably because The Sausage Link does a better job of it than they would. And, although The Sausage Link doesn’t ship, some tourists who come to Southwest Louisiana to hunt make special -- and very costly -- arrangements for the shop him to process their meat and FedEx it to their homes.
One cautionary note: boudin and the charming character of the Southwest Louisiana folk who serve it up are so irresistible that you’re likely to put on a good ten pounds during your Boudin Trail trek. The delicious boudin is definitely worth the weight gain, but do set limits for your consumption, exercise while you’re on the road, and be prepared to diet when you get home.
For more information on The Boudin Trail, travel to Southwest Louisiana and attractions around the lovely city of Lake Charles, contact the Lake Charles/Southwest Louisiana Convention and Visitors Bureau by phone at 1- 800-456-SWLA or online at www.visitlakecharles.org.
Copyright 2010 Jennifer Merin
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