East Texas Hotlinks

batt

I will be buying a BGE in a couple of weeks. Two things I am looking forward to cooking are. Blackened Rib Eye and Pittsburg Hotlinks. I have found good info on how to T-Rex the steaks. But have not seen any discussion of my childhood fav hotlinks. I have tried cooking them in a regular oven, and the results where not satisfactory. I think smoking them in the BGE would be the ticket. If you know of which I speak, please let me in on your method for cooking Pittsburg Links. (Pittsburg as in Pittsburg Texas) They have been made an sold in East Texas since 1887, brought to Texas by Geman immigrants.

http://www.pittsburghotlinks.net/



Here is a discription found on the web.

Meat Feat
Stubby, crunchy, mushy, lovely:
East Texas hot links turn one hundred.
by John Morthland

THEY DON'T TRAVEL well, so they're seldom seen outside East Texas. They're pale, stubby grease bombs about the size of a thumb; cooked down, they darken, turning crunchy outside and inside. Alone, they taste plain, not nearly as fiery as their name implies, but when doused with the thin, Tabasco-like hot sauce preferred by locals, they suddenly burst with rich flavor and a lovely smell.

East Texas hot links, now celebrating their one hundredth anniversary, are perhaps that region's sole contribution to Lone Star cuisine. Pittsburg butcher Charlie Hasselbach first made them (Col. 2--ed.) in 1897 as raw, take-home meats, then began cooking them for sale in 1918. Pitssburg is still the mecca for (Col. 3--ed.) devotees of the all-beef morsels: It is home, for example, to Gene Warrick's Pittsburg Hot Link Packers and the Pittsburg Hot Link Restaurant. Warrick's plant makes Pittsburg Hot Sauce and several other links, but the lion's share of the 40,000 pounds prepared weekly are hot links, which are sold to stores and restaurants mainly in an area bordered by Nacogdoches to the south, Fort Worth to the west, and the state line to the north and east. There's also a lively mail-order business for expatriates, a few outlets elsewhere in Texas, and fewer still aorund the rest of the nation. "But we could sell all we can make right here in East Texas," declares !
Warrick, who has been eating hot links for nearly sixty years, since they were two for a nickel.
The links, which have no filler or binder, are made with ground cheek and tongue and seasoned with a mix of spices that includes red pepper; water is added, which is why they're mushy. In most restaurants they're strung together, hung in vertical ovens--allowing the grease to drip off--and baked for about (Col. 4--ed.) 35 minutes at 375 degrees (a few restaurants prefer to smoke them like barbecue). At home, to minimize the splatter factor, they're baked on a grill over a pan for 75 minutes at 300 degrees.
Most vendors buy from Warrick's packing plant; a few, like Doc's Hot Links in Gilmer, concoct their own. In restaurants customers order them in multiples of two, for about 35 cents per link. At Pittsburg Hot Links or the Hot Link Palace in Mount Pleasant (where country crooner Ray Price gets his weekly fix), they dominate menus that include burgers, chicken, chili, and salads. Other menus resemble the one at Doc's, where potato salad, chili, and barbecue are the only additional offerings. Indeed, Doc's is the archetypal hot-link experience. There's just one long, narrow U-shaped Formica counter. Sort of a poor man's oyster bar, you might say, unless you're from East Texas, in which case oyster bars are a poor man's hot-link restaurant.

Spring Chicken

After that story I'm sure there will be a few Eggheads hanging around you at the Texas Eggfest LOL...

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Spring "Hot Legs" Chicken
Spring Texas USA

Car Wash Mike

Hope you get one soon and nice to have you. T-Rex really isn't blackening but great technique.
Good luck on the hotlinks.

Mike

batt

If you have never had Pittsburg Hotlinks you are really missing out. I remember going to Doc's Hotlinks in Gilmer TX as a chlid with my grandfather. Eating links and saltine crackers in a basket lined with heavy white butcher paper, and trying to cool off the heat from the hot sauce with a tall cool orange soda.

I live about a 130 miles from there now, and anytime I get anywhere near Gilmer or Pittsburg, I always go by there. Eat a dozen or so and take several dozen back for friend and family.

When I get the BGE in my hot little has I will post the results.

I cant believe that there are no East Texas country boys that have not tried to cook them with the BGE.