One of the inspirations for this blog is Texas sausage, an important part of our culinary heritage which sometimes gets short shrift compared to barbecue, Tex-Mex, chili and chicken fried steak, and I have enjoyed for several years investigating small town butcher shops and smokehouses for their sausages.
There are 3 places in El Campo, or at least claiming an El Campo mailing address: Prasek’s, which is actually located in Hillje a few miles south on US 59, Jr’s, the retail outlet of H & B Sausage Co. of El Campo, located in Mackay about 5 miles north of El Campo on US 59, and, right downtown in El Campo, Nowak’s Meat Market.
Compared to Vincek’s in nearby East Bernard Nowak’s is a small shop. They told me they’ve been in business for 26 years but the building looks like it’s been there a lot longer than that and there are relics of a much earlier mercantile era in a corner of the store. The heritage is Bohemian according to the clerk. A hand lettered sign taped to the front door the first time I visited advertised frying sized rabbits were available; I wondered about squirrels?
They only make 3 sausages here, a half and half (beef and pork), all pork, and a turkey summer sausage that is about 95% turkey and 5 percent pork from what they told me. They also carry a number of other sausages they don’t produce on premises including some interesting looking hot links and turkey franks plus Taylor wieners, a beef and pork, natural casing frankfurter from Taylor Meat Company in Taylor. I had never heard of this company before but apparently they’re widely distributed in Central Texas.
I like the summer sausage; it’s mildly flavored and probably a little healthier for
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The Taylor wieners are good too, almost as good as my favorite Texas made wiener, Shiner Dogs from Patek’s Shiner Smokehouse.
They had some jerky but I didn’t ask if they made it themselves and some boutique produced preserves, etc., some of it from a company in Corpus Christi, plus a couple of their own canned items that I saw, beets and sauerkraut.
I plan to report on Prasek’s and Jr.’s in upcoming posts.
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