How the Sausage Gets Made.
Street Taco, Green Zhug, and Miso Pork Scallion sausages are breaking the mold at The Meat Hook.
I have never been someone who gets excited by sausages (now I know you all have a joke in mind, but I am being serious here!). Look, I grew up in a kosher home (there are so many things you don’t know about me!) and sausages just never figured into my life as a kid or really as an adult. (Ditto lobster and bacon. I know. Criminal!)
But you know, people grow up, and things change. I haven’t been kosher since I was in elementary school, but I am still not all that moved by a whole lobster (lobster rolls, yes), and honestly, and bacon doesn’t really get me going unless it’s on an egg sandwich, but sausages are another story; at least since The Meat Hook moved into my neighborhood a few months ago and I met Steve Young.
Steve is a partner in the Carroll Gardens shop (along with founder Brent Young, no relation), and with The Meat Hook’s former sausage guru Kim Plafke, Steve tests and creates many of the shop's housemade whole animal butchered, no preservative added sausages.
Now, you may think you know sausages. You may be like “Andrea, seriously you’re a former kosher person, so literally anything in a casing would be a thrill,” but I submit to you that these sausages are so divine even a full on pork-loving traif connoisseur would be impressed.
Steve and Kim do a rotating menu of over one hundred sausage recipes (mostly pork-based, but also chicken, lamb, and a beef-pork combo) developed over the years since The Meat Hook first opened, experimenting with off beat and decidedly crazy combinations that have proven to be not only interesting, but incredible.
I fell in love with Steve’s Street Taco sausage, a pork-based link that tastes like a soft masa taco stuffed with something asada. The idea came from an excess of Nixtamal tortilla chips. “We had so many leftover chips, and I didn’t want to throw them out,” Steve told me. “I thought about how to use them and then I was like, Maybe I can make a sausage with this?” And he did and I am grateful because it was the greatest sausage of my life: sweet with the musty corn of tortillas, fiery with chiles, warm with pork. I wanted to eat these sausages for the rest of my days. My kids were blown away too. It was an entire family revelation.
Steve makes these taco sausages by first turning the fresh corn tortilla chips into fine bread crumbs and then adding everything you might find in a street truck taco—cilantro, lime, diced white onion, and cotija cheese—to the shop’s classic green chorizo base (rich with green peppers and poblanos). “I got lucky on that one,” he told me. “I barely had to recipe test it. I feel like it’s my best recipe so far.” I haven’t eaten my way through all the sausages, yet but it’s definitely a family fave so far. It tastes like taco night, but you just throw it on the grill and need nothing else.
But there are so many more to try: what about a Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup Sausage? Yes, crafted from a pork base with tomato paste, heavy cream, basil, onion, a mix of American and cheddar cheeses, and butter-toasted panko to bring in that warm toasty sandwich element.
Another fave is the Green Zhug Sausage, a recipe Kim developed that embraces the spicy, fresh Yemenite condiment with green peppers, cilantro, parsley, cardamom, cumin and allspice, along with fiery chiles in a pork based sausage. SO GOOD! Put that sucker in a pita, pile on some sumac-cured pickles on top, and forget kebabs forever.
We are also fans of the Chicken Parmesan, Philly Cheesesteak, Lamb Merguez, Roasted Mushroom and Pork, Miso Pork Scallion (based on a chinatown dumpling but with miso and furikake!), Coq au Vin, and Pork al Pastor. Even the plain old Hot Dogs are truly special—snappy and savory and so very important to any sort of summer cookout.
Here’s the thing; The Meat Hook has hundreds of sausage recipes in the vault and you need to try as many of them as you can. (Average price is $15.99/lb.) There are times when goals are important people, and this (like voting up and down the ballot) is one of those times! Make sausages a priority! (Should I put this on a t-shirt? A coffee mug? A dog onesie?)
Also, I must say that these sausages are not just creative for the sake of being wacky – they are thoughtfully prepared and truly a work of art – made from humanely-raised pastured animals they break down in house every week, without additives or preservatives or anything weird, which is rare for sausages. There’s prime stuff in there. I hope you love them as much as I do.
Get your sausages at any of the Meat Hook’s three locations, and follow them on Instagram to get the weekly sausage schedule. Your barbecue cred just got a serious bump. You’re welcome.
xx
Andrea