Hot links Chicago-style?

Are hot links, the coarse-ground kind, as made at innumerable South and West side barbecue joints and sold at places like Moo & Oink and Peoria Packing a uniquely Chicago food?

I have had sausages called "hot links" in other places, but they were always much more emulsified, like the Texas barbecue sausages. I have not seen the style sold in Chicago elsewhere, but my experience may be limited.

This has been discussed numerous times over the years, esp in the late days of that other forum and the early days of this one. My initial guess, backed up by experience both personal and vicarious, is that the TX link, generally, is more closely akin to the links common to Bohemian and German roots of TX BBQ, whereas the Chicago link is more like what one finds in the Mississippi Delta. Now, whence the Mississipi link is another question. The grind, the red pepper flakes and sage certainly seem to me just like the breakfast sausage one finds throughout the Southeast.

LAZ wrote:Are hot links, the coarse-ground kind, as made at innumerable South and West side barbecue joints and sold at places like Moo & Oink and Peoria Packing a uniquely Chicago food?

I have seen "hot links" in both Detroit and Southern Virginia, communities with a significant African American presence. In Southern Virginia, the sausages were a bright red, almost the color of a radish.

FWIW, Moo & Oink is selling its sausages in Woodman's Markets throughout the area.

LAZ,

There is a bit of Chicago Hot Link discussion in the Smoque BBQ - Now with sausage from Texas thread.

Enjoy,
Gary

I did search, but didn't find anything relevant. What I'm wondering is whether the style of hot link we get here is unique enough to this area to qualify as a Chicago food.

JeffB, you said it was "more like" the Mississippi Delta and Southeastern breakfast sausages. Does that mean "exactly like" or are there enough distinctions to make Chicago's style unique?

Even if it's not a Chicago-born food, if the only two places you can reasonably expect to find it are here and Mississippi, I'm inclined to count that as a Chicago dish.

LAZ wrote:I did search, but didn't find anything relevant.

This seems relevant to me, from the above link.

G Wiv wrote:I'd venture the inspiration for Chicago style hot links came up from the Mississippi Delta along with BBQ, Blues and Tamales. Far as hot links themselves, though this is speculation on my part, they may very well be the wild child offspring of the more sedate breakfast sausage.

G Wiv wrote:This seems relevant to me, from the above link.

G Wiv wrote:I'd venture the inspiration for Chicago style hot links came up from the Mississippi Delta along with BBQ, Blues and Tamales. Far as hot links themselves, though this is speculation on my part, they may very well be the wild child offspring of the more sedate breakfast sausage.

I saw that, but since you were speculating about inspiration rather than making actual comparisons of hot links sold in Chicago today vs. sausage available elsewhere, it didn't answer my question.

I personally, and people I know well have eaten what appeared to us to be the same links in MS. I don't think I could say that coursely ground pork sausage flavored with salt, red pepper flakes and sage is a unique enough concoction to pin it to a particular place. That's just "sausage" from Charlotte to Tallahassee to Little Rock for many. I will speculate that stuffing hot southern style pork sausage into a natural casing and smoking it appears to be a MS Delta/Chicago thing. I've been to a lot of BBQ places in the South and otherwise. Can't say I've seen too many hot links, of any stripe, east of the Delta and no "Chicago/MS" style hot links in Texas (though my Texas experience is limited to the big cities). One would suspect that the links we know and love came up the River Road with lots of other great things.

LAZ wrote:Are hot links, the coarse-ground kind, as made at innumerable South and West side barbecue joints and sold at places like Moo & Oink and Peoria Packing a uniquely Chicago food?

I have had sausages called "hot links" in other places, but they were always much more emulsified, like the Texas barbecue sausages. I have not seen the style sold in Chicago elsewhere, but my experience may be limited.

Both types of hot links are pretty common in Chicago if you look in the right places. As with "Chicago-style" pizza, hot dogs, ribs etc there are at least two distinct types of hot links found in Chicago.

The large, coarse-ground, spicy style (typified by Uncle John's excellent version) is often found smoked at many Chicago barbecue houses.

The smaller, more subtly spiced and finer textured hot links, such as those made by Parker House for over 50 years, are commonly found pan fried on breakfast plates at Chicago's soul food restaurants.



It's mere speculation but I wouldn't be surprised if both types of hot links had Southern roots.

If you care to do the actual comparison of Chicago hot links with Mississippi sausage, you can get the latter at several shops in Chicago. Scottie's Fish Market & Bait Shop should have a good supply of sausage but I'm afraid 'coon season might be over.



Scottie's Fish Market & Bait Shop
1442 S Pulaski Rd
Chicago
773-277-1622

JeffB wrote:I will speculate that stuffing hot southern style pork sausage into a natural casing and smoking it appears to be a MS Delta/Chicago thing. I've been to a lot of BBQ places in the South and otherwise. Can't say I've seen too many hot links, of any stripe, east of the Delta and no "Chicago/MS" style hot links in Texas (though my Texas experience is limited to the big cities). One would suspect that the links we know and love came up the River Road with lots of other great things.

To my mind, hot links rank with other Chicago ethnic foods. For another example, I'd call paczki a Chicago food. They didn't originate here; they're not unique to Chicago, but high-quality paczki are ubiquitous here in a way that they aren't in many other U.S. cities, and eaten here by people who have no Polish ancestry. In Detroit, I only saw them around Mardi Gras time, and I doubt many people outside Hamtramck knew about them.

I think I agree. These hot links are not common to any other urban BBQ I'm aware of, unless you count Jackson MS.

But I do think in Cleveland and Pittsburgh both pierogies and paczki (what I think of as the basic ethnic Polish foods people know) approach the broad popularity they enjoy here. Not nearly as many Poles, of course, but Poles (and people of Polish ancestory) as a percentage of the population, it might be pretty close. At P'burgh sporting events, they have pierogi races.

What are the hot links being sold in some store's freezer sections that are made from soy and look like a solid white cylinder about 6 to 8 inches long and about 2 inches in diameter? I even saw a box of these from Moo and Oink at Garden Fresh recently. These are nothing like regular hot links.

JeffB wrote:But I do think in Cleveland and Pittsburgh both pierogies and paczki (what I think of as the basic ethnic Polish foods people know) approach the broad popularity they enjoy here. Not nearly as many Poles, of course, but Poles (and people of Polish ancestory) as a percentage of the population, it might be pretty close. At P'burgh sporting events, they have pierogi races.

I recently escorted some foodie visitors from Cleveland to what I think of as a fairly routine Polish deli here and they were in raptures. They particularly commented on the paczki: "Oh, I thought those were only for Fat Tuesday!"

But I don't know Cleveland or these folks well, so I can't tell if they've just been unobservant at home.

Paczki are certainly more widespread than hot links, but you'd have trouble finding them in, say, San Francisco, or Cincinnati. So although we might share them with some other places, they're certainly part of Chicago's culinary tradition.

Another example of a Chicago ethnic food could be Italian lemonade. You can find it up and down the East Coast, I believe, but I never heard of it before I moved to Chicago and I'm sure you can't get it in Detroit, whereas here it's part of the culture of the city. I remember one of the TV stations used to shut down every night with a sequence of familiar city scenes, including a crowd lined up at Mario's.

From the opposite end, I'd call avgolemono a Detroit food in a way that it isn't a Chicago food. You can get it in any Greek restaurant here, and most people probably know what it is, but in Detroit you're apt to find it at any routine diner or hot dog stand (or at least you could when I was growing up there). To be sure, the diners are mostly run by Greeks, but similar places here don't usually have it.

Does this make sense?

LAZ wrote:I recently escorted some foodie visitors from Cleveland to what I think of as a fairly routine Polish deli here and they were in raptures. They particularly commented on the paczki: "Oh, I thought those were only for Fat Tuesday!"

But I don't know Cleveland or these folks well, so I can't tell if they've just been unobservant at home.

When I lived in Cleveland, you could FIND all the Polish specialties, especially if you spent a lot of time around the Polish community in West Cleveland, Parma, or Middleberg Heights. Pierogis were readily at the West Side Market. Paczkis were seldom seen except prior to Lent when a lot of my co-workers brought them in.

In Detroit, you would get a much broader selection of Polish foods in and around Hamtramack and in a few areas of the city of Detroit. In general. the Polish food and sausages were much better in Detroit (even though it took a few samples to prove that to my coworker.

LAZ wrote: but you'd have trouble finding them in, say, San Francisco, or Cincinnati.

CIncinnati was settled largely by Bavarians and other southern Germans. I never heard of a paczki until introduced to them by a Detroit cop.

I wish that some food historian would take a book like Thomas Sowell's book on migration and use it to explain the prevalence of certain foods in various US areas.