February 4, 2009

• Usinger’s of Milwaukee

  Elves & Sausage Epiphanies

  An elf named Fritzie yelled at me from the windows of a 19^th century store on Milwaukee’s Old World Third Street. At first, I suspected an acid flashback, after all the elves’ store is directly across the street from Mader’s German restaurant where Liberace used to throw wild all night parties for his jet set pals. Then my sausage-seeking nose reassured me – these were the Usinger’s elves, as real and down to earth as bratwurst. 

  

  Fritzie explained that, with the single exception of Santa Claus, Usinger’s is the world’s leading employer of elves. Led by this 100 year old leader, the Usinger elves use magical powers to create sausage of unsurpassed quality.

   

  Inside their shop, tile floors, marble counters and wood beams have been in place constantly since 1880. The last cosmetic change took place in 1906 when German painter George Peters was commissioned to paint a mural depicting, what else? - elves making sausages.

  Usinger’s story is now Milwaukee lore. Debra Usinger told it this way. “In the late 1870′s my great grandfather, a young Bavarian named Fred Usinger, arrived in Milwaukee with $400 in cash and sausage recipes he had learned as an apprentice “wurstmacher,” in Frankfurt.

  He went to work for the widow Julia Gaertner, who operated a small butcher shop on Third Street. Within a year or so, he bought Mrs. Gaertner out and married her niece, Louise. The couple moved into living quarters above the store and worked eighteen hour days making and selling sausage.

  “Their best customers were saloonkeepers who were in a very completive business where success depended on the quality of their free lunches. As long as their customers relished Usinger’s sausages, the saloons paid a premium price…At the turn of the last century, much of Milwaukee’s German aristocracy did their shopping on Third Street, and the store soon became popular. Before long, the Usingers were shipping sausage as far away as New York. Business became so good that more help was needed, but my great grandparents believed in keeping growth under control, so they could maintain the quality of the product. We have tried to maintain that philosophy ever since,” she said.

  Fred Usinger died in 1930. Debra and “baby brother” Fritz are the fourth generation of the family to lead a company whose name is synonymous with superior sausages — in all 50 states. I was leery about taking a tour of the plant because I knew Lord Bismarck’s infamous warning – “If people knew how laws and sausage were made, they would never want either.”

  But, I can’t resist elves.

  Sausage 101

  In an immaculate, cool environment, my tour group watched 2000 pound vats of meat being poured into a grinder, before going to a mulcher. Old German hands tested the consistency, as did scientific measurements. Then the meat moved to the stuffers. Fritz told us that his natural casings cost 53 cents a pound extra, plus considerable extra labor costs to hand pack each intestinal case onto the stuffing machine. The extra cost is exponential for the double “soda hog bung” casings for their signature braunschweiger. These must be imported from Germany and include both a cow and hog casing, sewn together.

  

   Later we followed the sausages across town to Usinger’s smoke house, which might well be the world’s largest wood burning barbecue pit. I could smell the bacon, ham, pastrami, et cetera from half a mile away. By then, I’d decided that if Bismarck had toured Usinger’s, we’d have a healthier legislative process today. What an epiphany, I had been afraid to see sausage made, for fear I wouldn’t want to eat it again. Instead everything I saw, even the first stages of the process, just made me hungry for sausage. Thank God, Debra and Fritz insisted that I try several dozen sausages and meat products. Let me count the ways I obliged, you should be taking notes now:

  

  Mettwurst (minced pork), pastrama, Canadian (loin) bacon, corned beef, kishka (blood and barley), ring blood, Thueringer (blood), tongue blood, pepper blood, Hessische (heavily smoked) liverwurst, Strassburger liver sausage (with diced pork tongues and pistachios), Hildesheimer (mellow, goose style) liver sausage , blood-free kishka, Braunschweiger (Fred Usinger’s specialty since 1880, with the double casing), Thueringer summer sausage (peppercorns gave this extra tangy pork and beef summer sausage zip), Berliner Bologna, mortadella, yachtwurst (coarsely cut pork shoulder blended with finely chopped beef, pistachios, and garlic), veal Bologna, leona Bologna (smooth, finely chopped, mildly seasoned) , schinkenwurst (ham sausage), Black Forest (aged smoked) ham, Westphalia (dry cured and smoked) ham, Cajun brats, Stuttgarter knackwurst (pork, beef and garlic – a tailgate favorite in Wisconsin), smoked kielbasa (aka Polish), andouille (Cajun, but without the organs of the traditional version), veal sausage, Saucisschen (breakfast) sausage, bockwurst (white sausage of veal and pork), linguica (garlic and paprika), Weisswurst (Munich white with veal and bacon and Asian spices), smoked chorizo, Hungarian sausage and hot dog wieners.

  Redemption for the Unholy 

  Believe it or not, there were dozens of other sausage products that I didn’t have time to taste. Usinger’s makes every historical ethnic sausage they have heard about. Before going to Usinger’s, I had been convinced that two things defile the holy conception of sausage making – chicken and cheese injections. That was before Debra introduced me to post-modern sausage theology. Usinger’s makes chicken sausage, with cheese injections, in at least five styles – Chicken Cordon Bleu (with Canadian bacon and Swiss cheese), Italian (with mozzarella) and with apple, or with bacon and cheddar and with Romano. All use smoked chicken; the three that I tasted were among my favorite sausages, of any kind, ever.

  

  A little apres-sausage treat across the street from Usinger’s at Mader’s.

  I later accepted that my tasting circuits might have been operating in overload mode that day, so I determined to repeat the experiments in more uncontrolled environments. That’s easier in Des Moines now that Gateway Market sells Usinsger’s sausages. They can order any kind of sausage you read about here and have it delivered in three days.

  Don’t you love the 21^st century? 

  • 9:36 pm
  • 2 Comments