Regular readers will know we got skunked on a recent elk hunting trip to Colorado. Rather than come back without an elk story for you, dear reader, I visited an old fashioned butcher that processes all sorts of meat, from wild beasties to hogs and beef cattle raised by the local 4H.

The distinction between wild game taken by hunters and ranched game sold to restaurants is important because hunted meats can not be sold for public consumption. In order to be legally sold in this country, domesticated game animals (like all other livestock) must be slaughtered and immediately processed in a USDA inspected abattoir. While these barriers exist to protect public health, they also make delicous game meats less accessible and more expensive to the average food lover.

Hunters bring their game to “no kill” facilities like Old World Meat, which fabricates elk carcasses into steaks, roasts and delicious sausages. At the height of the hunting season, over two tons of elk are processed here each day, but Old World still returns orders with next day service.

The sheer size of an elk requires hunters to halve or quarter it to haul it out of the woods. At left, shop co-owner Matt Anderegg poses with two hindquarters as delivered by a customer. An elk carcass resembles a scaled-down side of beef, and is cut in much the same manner. Major differences: elk are not as thickly muscled as cattle, and run far leaner due to their active outdoor lifestyle.

Prior to fabriation, any stray hairs and debris are singed off the exterior with a propane flame thrower. The outermost layer of meat and silverskin is sliced off and disposed. The clean, interior muscle is cut to each customer’s specifications, immediately packaged in butcher paper and flash frozen. A 400 pound elk ultimately yields about 100 pounds of delicious venison, according to Anderegg’s estimates.

Notice the leanness of elk meat in both these photos. Elk tastes like expensive, dry aged beef in that its minerally, meaty flavors are concentrated compared to ordinary, unaged beef. Unlike other kinds of wild meats, elk has little of the gaminess you might expect. I asked the Andereggs what contributes to off flavors of game meats, and an interesting debate ensued. Matt’s brother in law Rick Nehm suggested that diet plays a major role, and cited how antelope tastes like the highland sage on which they feed. Dumpster diving bears reportedly taste like garbage, while those living far from human contact don’t. I’m told that mountain lion tastes horrible no matter what.

The way that game is handled after the kill also plays a role in its flavor. For hunters, the Andereggs offer these basic tips for optimal quality:

• Cool the meat as quickly as possible in the field by skinning, gutting, and bleeding immediately.
• Expose more surface area to the cold winter air by cutting the carcass into quarters.
• Do not rinse the meat, nor allow ice to contact it directly.

How many butcher shops these days sell entire sides of beef, or whole hogs custom cut and wrapped for your freezer? The Anderegg family has since 1967. They make over thirty kinds of fresh, smoked and fully cooked sausages, and house-smoke hams, bacon and turkey. Stout 1/4 inch slices of their bacon at bottom right are the thickest you’re likely to find unless you slice your own slab bacon.

On the day I visited, chicken and apple sausage was being made. Shot with high velocity from the muzzle of a full auto sausage cannon, the machine simultaneously twists the filled collagen casings into links of consistent size and density. Whoever said you don’t want to see sausage or politics being made was only half right.

Beef jerky and elk snack sticks (at top right and left) had just finished curing in the smoker. The skinny snack sticks resemble the Polish sausages called kabanosy, except these are made of ranched elk and pork. Offered in their most popular teriyaki flavor or a not so spicy “hot” stick, they made for the perfect car snack on our drive home to California. Well, almost perfect: an Octoberfest lager would have paired great with these delicious sausages. Thanks, Matt, for your road trip gifts!

Expert meat purveyors are a dying breed even in places with a strong ranching and hunting tradition like Colorado’s Western slope. Where I live, it’s incredibly rare to find a butcher shop with extensive expertise in wild and domesticated meats, let alone in-house smoking and curing capabilities. I was thrilled to stumble across Old World on my short visit to Grand Junction, and look forward to visiting again (with my own elk, hopefully) next year.

Old World Meat
1765 Main Street
Grand Junction, CO 91501
970-245-2261

Ever take a trip somewhere and get bummed out to come home to your usual humdrum routine? If there’s a word for that in some other language, it’s probably a German, twenty syllable, consonant-rich monstrosity. In my younger, wanderlustful days, I travelled constantly for work and usually missed that interesting some-other-place to return home to New York, as if the New York City suburbs were a sucky place to live. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

Now that I’m older and shittier, I’m rather comfortable with my suburban Orange County life and better appreciate the joys of living here. In the first days after our vacation, I ate tacos at my favorite hole in the wall taqueria, Costa Mesa’s El Toro Bravo, and hit the weekend dim sum at Irvine’s China Garden. I felt like a junkie fresh out of rehab.

Our hunting expeditition to the Western slope of Colorado was terrific except no elks graced us with a viable target. I enjoyed the lakeside view from our rustic cabin on a snowy mountain at 10,000 feet of elevation. The little sprites went fishing, and we pan fried just-caught cold water rainbow trout with a parmesan and instant potato flakes crust, sauced with a lemon beurre noisette. The 4 wheel drive went out on the truck as the sun was setting, stranding us in the mud during a snow squall, when the windshield wipers decided to quit too (thanks alot, GMC).

Despite all that fun, there’s no place like home, and sleeping in my own bed with a warm cat dozing at my feet.

A week outside the usual routine gave me perspective on the foodways both at home and in Colorado. Stay tuned for a story on butchers that process wild game, and a small town where artisans turn renowned local fruit and corn into wines, vodkas, and brandies.

Some of the best barbecue in the world can be found in small central Texas towns like Lockhart and Luling. When barbecue shrines matter of factly serve unpretentiously great food wrapped plainly in butcher paper, the effect is unsettling to someone used to eating mediocre barbecue at inflated, big city prices.

The one slice of brisket I ordered at Kreuz Market (photo below) cost me a paltry 96 cents. You might ask how a restaurant would be willing to sell just one measly slice of brisket, and the answer lies at its humble beginnings.

These joints started life as meat markets and groceries which sold lunch to cattlehands and cotton pickers at the turn of the previous century. These working stiffs may have been too poor to eat in restaurants, but they could afford cheap cuts of smoked meats. The butchers would sell it by the pound, along with pickles, saltines, and “rat cheese,” which were the only side dishes available in those days. Since every grown man carried a pocket knife, no utensils were provided. Communal knives were chained to the wall at Kreuz Market for any hapless schmuck who forgot his.

The tiny town of Luling has two top notch BBQ joints

Brisket and links served with no plates or utensils. City Market Luling, Texas

Skip forward to 2006, and barbecue isn’t cheap any more. Finding skilled pitmasters to babysit a cooker for 18 hours isn’t as easy as hiring a high school kid to flip burgers, and retail prices reflect that expense. All the same, prices here seem low compared to restaurants paying rent in West Los Angeles.

The style of barbecue in Central Texas is austere: a monastic incantation of meat, salt, pepper, smoke. It might be the purest expression of barbecue I’ve found. Dry rub still hasn’t encroached on a minimalist style that predates the Depression, but barbecue sauce is available (on the side) at the places which have caved in to modern times.

The wee town of Luling has two renowned barbecue joints (City Market and Luling Bar-B-Q), but its larger neighbor Lockhart has no less than four (Black’s, Kreuz Market, Smitty’s Market and Chisholm Trail). I only had time to visit City Market, Black’s and Kreuz Market in a progressive dinner blitzkrieg.

Black’s Barbecue has continuously operated in this location by the same family since 1932. It looks exactly as you’d expect an old time barbecue joint to look. Its woodpaneled walls and timeworn cafeteria tables might have been last updated during LBJ’s administration. Like the other shops I visited, you order at the back of the restaurant, where the BBQ pits are walled off in a room designed to keep smoke from infusing the whole building.

Black’s Barbecue. Lockhart, Texas

Slicing a rack of ribs at Black’s. Note the brick BBQ pits.

Time warp

Brisket, pork rib, and sausage at Black’s.

Kreuz Market dates back to 1900, but a recent famly spat forced the current owner to move the business into a larger building down the street from its original location. His father willed the original building to his daugher Nina, and the business to his son Rick. The children don’t get along, yet both of them wanted to continue in the barbecue business. So Rick built a big new building and took the Kreuz name with him, while his sister renamed the old place Smitty’s, after their father “Smitty” Schmidt.

Kreuz cooks shoulder clod, an unusual beef cut that’s leaner than brisket. I was stuffed by this point so I didn’t try the shoulder clod, the pork chops or any of their famous sausages. Rick Schmidt’s method of cooking shoulder clod is in Peace, Love, & Barbecue. I plan to cook it at home to see what this Texas specialty is all about.

The pits at this new location are designed exactly like the pits from the original Kreuz store. Post oak logs fire the brick pits, rather than mesquite, which is more commonly employed in Texas. Heat and smoke are drawn across the long brick pit and up the chimney at the far end of this photo. This is only one of the ten or twelve such pits I saw that supply their 23,000 square foot restaurant.

Note the open firebox and the blazing flames. Kreuz Market cooks hotter and faster than most places (400 degrees F versus the usual 200-250, so the pitmasters must be attentive to avoid burned meat.

Elvis lives

96 cents worth of Lone Star brisket. No BBQ sauce, no utensils!

Every little town in this part of Texas seems to have a smokehouse or a hole in the wall with a barrel smoker out back. Most aren’t as nationally famous as the three places I’ve mentioned here. Unlike other barbecue restaurants across America, these can trace a direct lineage to their 19th century German immigrant ancestors who settled this region. Outsiders gradually brought influences like barbecue sauce and side dishes, but the core Texas values remain stubbornly intact at these old school joints: meat seasoned only with salt, pepper and smoke, and served without plates or utensils. Eating cottonpicker style is a proud anthropological legacy from families who’ve been keeping their food real for over 100 years.

For further reading about barbecue across the vast nation of Texas, visit DallasFood.org and Texas BBQ Trail.

City Market
633 E. Davis St.
Luling, TX 78648
830-875-9019

Blacks Barbecue
215 N. Main St.
Lockhart, TX 78644
512-398-2712
www.blacksbbq.com

Kreuz Market
619 N. Colorado St.
Lockhart, TX 78644-2110
512-398-2361
www.kreuzmarket.com

The LA Times ran a story today exposing a lawsuit among the family that owns the In-N-Out hamburger empire. Free registration required for the LA Times.

In-N-Out is still a privately held company and none of its stores are franchised. The lawsuit will reveal previously hidden details of the company’s internal workings. The Times story tells of the drama centered on the 23 year old heiress of the empire, who allegedly wants to accelerate expansion into regions where elder members of the family have been reluctant to go. Those lusting for a Double-Double in other parts of the country might get their wish, that is, if the company doesn’t falter under the weight of overambitious expansion. Remember Krispy Kreme’s rollercoaster IPO and subsequent market collapse?

Note to heiress: sometimes, slow growth is better.

For those of you not in the Western USA, this legendary California fast food burger chain dates back to 1948. Many of America’s international fast food empires started in post-war California. To this day, southern California is home to this country’s best hamburgers of the chain and gourmet types. Fatburger, Original Tommy’s, In-N-Out . These are burgers that have been imitated all over the world. I’m especially fond of the Japanese chain MosBurger, which makes burgers that look every bit as good as their ads. How many corporate chains can you say that about? Their Spicy MosBurger, with chili and jalapeno peppers, kept me happy on many a late night. If you have a great burger chain where you live (especially if you’re from outside the US), please leave me a note and tell me about it.