Coffee and cocoa sausage? For the Sausage Sensei, nothing is off the table

In the realm of Texas barbecue, brisket reigns supreme. Many of us have seen images of the pitmaster at work, resplendent in black apron, thick gloves, baseball cap pulled low, prodding a slab of beef.

But there’s a Texas pitmaster named Bill Dumas who has a style of his own. Perhaps it’s impersonating Elvis or challenging a barbecue rival to a wrestling match.

Daniel Vaughn, barbecue editor of Texas Monthly, has been writing about Dumas’ showmanship and how he’s earned a worldwide reputation as “Sausage Sensei” from Texas.

Vaughn joined the Standard to dish on the details. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: When did you first encounter Bill Dumas?

Daniel Vaughn: Oh, wow. That was way back. That was over a decade ago when he was working at the Smokey Denmark barbecue trailer in Austin, Texas.

And what was it that impressed you about him back then?

Well, back then, you know, he was already showing some signs of that sausage creativity – doing the macaroni and cheese sausage, apple pie sausage and pretty much just stuffing things into a casing that I’d never seen before.

A lot of people go for brisket, but Dumas does seem to have an obsession with sausage. What’s that about?

He thinks of himself really as a sausage ambassador and teaches the wonders of Texas smoked sausage all over the world, but when he comes back to Texas and creates his own menu items at Schulze’s Pit Room in Seguin, where he currently works, he really looks at all these dishes that he loves and figures out a way to put them all together in a sausage.

Yeah, he really pushes the envelope, too. I was reading your article and you quoted him as saying, “I wanted to take composed dishes, explode them, and put them back together in a tube.”

I mean, like the Thanksgiving sausage, it’s got turkey in there and cranberries, sweet potatoes, cornbread dressing… Like, it has got the entire Thanksgiving meal. I went in one day and he had a Costa Rican coffee and cocoa sausage that had these like crunchy pecans in them and a dark chocolate coffee. It was a really strange combination.

He’s even thrown together Big Red and barbacoa with corn tortillas all wrapped up together in a sausage.

That’s crazy. That’s absolutely crazy. Let’s get to the bottom line. Not all of it can taste… I was going to say “right.” What about good?

Yeah, you know, there are some of them, like, you know, when you go into the ice cream shop and you’re like, is that really going to work? And they come away with, well, it wasn’t that bad.

I would think that’s the way I would describe the coffee and chocolate sausage. But his other sausages, like I had an Italian beef sausage with giardiniera in it, really incredible. And just his basic sausages, the Texas hot link, the jalapeño and cheese sausage, brisket boudin… I mean, the guy knows how to smoke a sausage that’s for sure.

This isn’t just a shtick either. I mean, he’s made a lot of international connections. You mentioned that he has shared his techniques in classes around the world, barbecue festivals in Australia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil…

And I think he said something like “who would have thought the humble wiener would could take you around around the world?” Is there some kind of real genuine connection, though, to Texas through this sausage-making? Because as I was saying earlier, most folks think of brisket as sort of the signature protein.

Well, you know, we’ve got the Texas Trinity here when it comes to barbecue, and that is brisket and pork ribs and smoked sausage. But really it’s the smoked sausage that is what sets Texas barbecue apart from so many other styles.

It goes back to our meat market history where you were using leftover cuts to smoke and leftover cuts grind up and put into a casing. So that sausage element is really important to Texas barbecue.

And so him going around the world, you know, he’s so in demand, he is bringing that Texas flag with him, it just might not look like what you would have found in a turn-of-the-19th century meat market.

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I want to loop back, though, to his showmanship and his sort of personal style that’s kind of set him apart. What’s with these Elvis impersonations and, you know, jumping into the wrestling ring? What’s that?

Yeah, I mean, Bill just lives life to the fullest. I mean, they call him the “Sausage Sensei.” And it’s almost like he gets into character when he’s in some of these barbecue events.

And so I was down in Monterrey, Mexico, and he was serving up a chicatana ant sausage. And they had a wrestling ring, luchadores there with their masks on.

He didn’t have this planned or anything. He just walked right over, took his apron off, took his shirt off, and like jumped in the ring and started challenging. It’s like he just he wanted to be thrown on the mat

So yeah. Man, he is a character.

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