His doesn’t use paprika, or at least he wouldn’t divulge that part of the recipe, but the rest is the familiar mix of beef, pork, salt, black pepper, and garlic. Gary Vincek at Vincek’s Smokehouse in East Bernard wouldn’t dare mess with what he believes to be a 200-year-old family recipe from Moravia. Not everyone is so cavalier with their family’s recipe. “I didn’t realize how much I changed the recipes until I started looking back at how simple the originals were.” Mike’s elders used garlic powder in their mix, but he insists on roasted garlic for the flavor. (During my quest, I found that a variation on this combination was pretty standard.) The recipe originally came from his grandfather William Smolik, and probably even precedes him. Like most proprietors that I spoke with, Smolik wasn’t giving up his secrets, but he would offer that he uses pork and beef and seasons it with salt, pepper, garlic, and paprika, among other ingredients. The Czech who made that Smolik’s sausage was Mike Smolik, a third-generation barbecue man who uses a family sausage recipe and smokes it over hickory. We see them on menus all over Central Texas, but what can you expect when you bite into one? This spartan response piqued my curiosity and launched me into a search from Hallettsville to West for an actual definition of what constitutes Czech-Tex sausage-to, if you’ll humor me, find out how the sausage is made. “A Czech made it” was her simple reply without a hint of sarcasm. As I waited for my change, I asked the clerk what made this particular link of sausage a Czech sausage. A few months ago I was at Smolik’s Smokehouse in Mathis to buy some smoked meats, including a link of their homemade Czech-style sausage.
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