Meat+Poultry - February 2024 - 30

ARTISAN SAUSAGE
own sausage, in house, and a barometer for
its reputation is based on the quality of the
sausage it produces.
Many of his special menu additions are
based on a holiday dish, like the Thanksgiving
dinner sausage, which was featured on
the " Today Show " several years ago. More
recently, to honor John Brotherton, a longtime
friend and owner of Brotherton's who died
unexpectedly in January, Dumas created a
sausage based on one of his friend's favorite
barbecue dishes.
Dumas spends almost
every weekend teaching
his barbecue techniques
and sharing his sausage
secrets with paying
attendees at all skill levels,
from backyard cooks to
restaurant operators.
He said his creative creations are
the result of his playing with visual and
textural elements.
" We're making the composed dish and
manipulating the ingredients of the composed
dish to where they interplay with the emulsion,
but they don't break the emulsion and they
don't break the bind. And then you get those
elements - visual, textural. That's what I
do, and that's part of the challenge. From
an artisanal standpoint, you can do that but
in a commercial application, I haven't seen
anybody do that. "
A PLACE IN HISTORY
Dumas has a thorough understanding of the
history of Texas dating back to it being under
Spanish Colonial rule in the 16th century and
the subsequent settlement of the territory by
European immigrants, including settlers from
Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia through
the 19th century. He said the diverse groups
of settlers over hundreds of years brought
with them their food cultures and adapted
them to the climate and ingredients available
in Central Texas as well as their methods of
food preservation in an era that pre-dated
refrigeration. These influences are still evident
in the products served in what Dumas refers
to as market-style barbecue that is prevalent in
the region today.
" If we stop and think about that, and
we think about what wurst and sausage is
in relationship to these people that settled
Central Texas, then we quickly discover how
this is an integral part of Texas cultural food
history, " Dumas said.
And for barbecue purists, like Dumas
and his circle of colleagues in the Texas
barbecue industry, a requirement to establish
an eatery's street cred is that they make their
30 MEAT+POULTRY | 02.24 | www.meatpoultry.com
" Just in honor of him, I made an Alabama
white sauce chicken sausage. So, every single
element of the composed dish of the Alabama
white sauce chicken was inside there; we're
talking the mayo, the horseradish, so the
customer got the explosion of flavor from the
white sauce chicken along with big chunks of
the chicken suspended in the emulsion. "
On the drawing board and the next outsidethe-box
creation coming from Dumas is banana
pudding sausage, using banana emulsion
powder and adding visual and textural
elements by flambéing like a bananas foster
dish, complete with rum flavoring and brown
sugar suspended in the emulsion along with
liqueur-soaked vanilla wafers and incorporate
them into the mix.
While Dumas has spent much of the last
decade working with restaurants to develop
their sausage programs, on most weekends he
teaches sausage making to students at all skill
levels at his restaurant and he gets plenty of
requests to travel and do on-site teaching of his
craft or cater meals for large groups at special
events all over the United States and beyond,
including in Australia and Brazil.
Looking ahead, Dumas said he has been
approached for a proposed book deal, which
he plans to pursue in 2024 and his sausagemaking
classes are as popular as ever.
Meanwhile he hopes to continue making
his brand of craft sausage and creating
memorable eating experiences for diners and
food enthusiasts.
His goal is to make food that is comparable
to how art is created and perceived.
" Art is about making people stop in their
tracks, think and reconsider. So, if I can
continue to make people stop and reconsider
their food, that's a really good thing and I want
to do that. "
Bill Dumas
http://www.meatpoultry.com
Meat+Poultry - February 2024

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