A Pound of Questions: 16 Questions for a Sausage Artist: Randy Ream - Elburn Meat Market

Randy Ream is an affable, easygoing master of his craft. I was at his store in Elburn, Illinois – about 55 miles west of Chicago. Urban sprawl hasn’t gotten here yet. We met on the Sunday when the last NFL game of the year was scheduled. The store was doing a nice business; people stocking up on game time treats.

He poured me cup of coffee and he shared his thoughts with me on his craft and how he came to be a sausage artist. 

1. Your father started Reams, what made you come back and take it over?

My father bought the Elburn Meat market in 1954 and the building dates to 1904.

I got a music education degree and started playing around Chicago and when you’re a musician there’s a lot downtime and I didn’t like that.  This channels my energy.

Around 1980 I told my Dad that this place can’t afford three families so we got into making sausage and it snowballed from there.

2. Did you have a background in being a butcher?

We grew up upstairs so by the time you were six years old you were sweeping and doing other stuff. Then as you grew taller and older you scrape blocks, then after that started trimming meat.  By the time I was eleven or ten I was trimming meat for the local farmers because that’s what we did back then.
We might do two or three beef a day just trimming and it’s boring. If I never cut meat again I’ll be happy.

3. What experiences in your life prepared you for running this business?

You got to like what you’re doing more than anything else. And to be prepared for this business I did have a good background in meat.

I think one of the things you have to know as a sausage maker is you have to know meat. Just by the looking at it, touching it, knowing what state it is in.

4. When you took over the business what kind of sausages was part of the repertoire?

Actually we had an old stuffer in the window and my Dad inherited it with the business. It was an old buffalo stuffer; a hand crank thing.  Once a year he would bring it out and stuff sausages with it for a local church.
Finally, around 1970 one of employees said why don’t we make bratwurst. You can buy recipes and buy the spices and that’s what started it. So we made Bratwurst, Italian Sausage and Polish Sausage. The big three. But we didn’t have a smokehouse so we were making fresh sausage.

5. When did you start getting the sausage bug?

About 1981 when we bought the smokehouse, a better stuffer, a mixer and grinder. And that gets you into smoked Polish and summer sausage. But we have didn’t have a chopper at the time so that meant you can make a coarse ground hot dog but not a really a fine emulsion hot dog.

6. What was the first sausage that you made that you felt was yours? What was it? How did it do?

It goes back to 1985 when I started with all the equipment I started fiddling with recipes. Take a pre-blend bratwurst and add some things to it. Then my Dad and I would have these arguments about who made better bratwurst. Then I started winning awards and he finally went “Okay maybe its better.”
Brats were my first and some Italian.

7. Did you have experienced butchers on staff that helped you with your first sausages? What did you learn from them?

I learned from different spice companies. You get the basic information and you go from there. Nothing against the spice companies but they are basic sausage makers. When I got my big machinery I met Wolfe and Claus and Hans. Those kind of guys who are German trained and those are the guys who really know sausages.

I don’t have any one spice house that I favor. I flip all over.

8. Have you ever had one of your customers give you a recipe for a sausage?

Yes. They come in and have an old family recipe and they want twenty pounds and I’ll make it up for them.  I’ve never stolen a recipe from a customer. Just because a lot of recipes are traditional and I just don’t think those are marketable.

9. How do you decide what sausages to make?

I still like traditional sausages.  There aren’t a lot of new things you can put into them. To me a lot of it is just filling up a sausage with too many funny things that  turns it into something you have to have a condiment with. That’s not a true sausage. Like a broccoli cheddar chicken sausage - you can just put broccoli and cheddar on top of it and have a chicken sausage. But some people like and it’s a marketing thing.
I still like to make frankfurters. I have German sausage book and I know sausage kitchen German. I can read the recipe and I can stay true to those recipes.
Then when we go to meat conventions we sit around and talk recipes. That’s where I got the idea for Chicken sausage.  I picked up the idea from a guy named Dittmer from Sunnyvale, California. And he’s a German sausage maker.
I have a real creative friend in Hudson, Wisconsin and his last name is Reams. He doesn’t have the bigger equipment that I do so he has to rely more creativity. He has 40 or 50 different types of Brats all basic Brats but with different twists on them.

10. You’re a pretty highly regarded meat market – how far flung are you customers? Do you ship your sausages nationally? Internationally?

We focus on the retail customer and I haven’t reached the artisan standards like the guy in Seattle who’s son is Mario Batali. He’s reached that artisan level. 

I’m not that cult sausage maker. If I could get 17 dollars a pound for salami, I’m all for it.  Sure.

We don’t ship nationally on a regular basis. And we don’t ship internationally.

11. Have you ever had a customer ask you to make a large batch of sausage to their specs?

About the biggest is two or three hundred pounds. Nothing too large. But a guy wanted a combo load of beef jerky and that’s like eighty or ninety thousand pounds and you go, “No that’s too big.”

If I started now (February) I might have it done by August. But we’re still too small for that. We’re a store withed limited storage.

12. How many sausages do you stock?

I don’t like to count them (laughs). At least a hundred different types of smoked meats and sausages. We make ten different type of salami sticks, ten different types of jerky.  I know that’s not sausage but its in our stock.

13. What’s your favorite sausage? Why?

Whatever is coming out of the smokehouse at the time. That’s my favorite sausage. It’s like which one of your kids do you like the best.

14. Last year I tasted your South African Boerwurst Sausage - how do you find these recipes? How did people like it?

With that recipe I called one of my equipment guys. He from Australia and he’s selling equipment in Cleveland and I told him I needed a recipe for Boerwurst Sausage. And the next thing I know I get a fax from Johannesburg and it’s got a recipe on it. Then you kind of have to flip it over and make it a little bit more American.

Right now I have a South African who works for me and he likes the Boerwurst. So its certified and we sell some of it to the South African Consulate in Chicago. It’s a good recipe.

It’s a real different sausage recipe. It roasted coriander and I’m trying a to find a good source for spices because we don’t have the same spices as they do. But I’m trying to get South African spices.

Its got’s Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, cloves and very low in salt.

15. Do you have sausages that you wish people should try but don’t – like great sausages that no one knows about?

I make this stuffed belly. I’ll make one and throw half of it a way, but its an unbelievable lunch meat. What it is I put it into a slab of bacon then I sew it back up.

So you make a pocket and that becomes the casing. And then you stuff it with lunch meat that I learned from Horst Lutte from Switzerland. Then what he does he’ll take fresh clove of garlic and fresh onion, throw it into the chopper, along with a basic boloney. But then he’ll put curry into it.

Then you take ham and pistachio nuts then red and green peppers. You chop those up so you it get a lunch meat that’s about ten inches across and it’s wonderful. But then people won’t buy because it’s got fat on the outside.

Then they’ll sit there and put a big spoonful of mayo on their sandwich. But, it is wonderful. But American tastes…who knows.

16. It’s February 2009, what new or standard sausages should people come into try? 

Come in and try the dried sausages. Those have been what I’ve been working on. They are so difficult to make because you have to watch the meat all through out the process.
I was watching the cold cuts episode on the History channel and they have the guy from the Columbus Sausage company. And what he says is that you have to watch the meat all the way through.  You have to be aware of everything from start to finish. It takes almost a month to make.  You have to dry it down, get your starter culture right, and make sure your salt concentration is right. Watch your PH levels. It’s difficult but they turning out real well.
We call it Elburner salamis (of course for Elburn). And we do Fanocciona salami – its has fennel, curry, Chianti and I just made it up from there.
(Great stuff – I bought some. KA note)

A Pound of Questions: 16 Questions for a Sausage Artist: is a copyrighted trademark of Sausagefest.com

---