- Louisiana is the home of andouille.
We got jambalaya, crawfish boils, gumbo.
- You can use it on virtually anything.
So, we're gonna head up to Wayne Jacob's Smokehouse
in LaPlace, Louisiana.
Then we're gonna head back to New Orleans
to hang out with Mason at Turkey and the Wolf.
- [Brent] Woo!
- Throw a f****** crawfish boil and maybe we'll have
another beer or two.
- Maybe.
- I love New Orleans.
- It's the s***.
- We're here, Wayne Jacob's Smokehouse.
We are gonna learn from Jarred, the owner,
and Brian, the butcher, how to make traditional
andouille, andouille, andouille?
- Andouille. - Andouille.
I've been pronouncing it wrong for years.
What makes LaPlace the andouille capital of the world?
- At one time, I think there were probably like 10 or 15,
or maybe more, places that were selling it.
- Really?
- Yeah, it's down to about three or four now.
It has been made in this area for over 200 years.
It was brought with the French in the 1700's
but probably in this area it's been since,
you know, the early 1800's.
- So, this is something that we make in the shop.
Andouille is something that's so specific to your cuisine
that I've never truly had the authentic thing before, so.
- And even regionally here-- - Oh, really?
- It varies from here to, you know, an hour from here
in Lafayette.
- So what makes andouille, andouille?
Like, what's special about it?
- As far as ours are concerned, it's leaner.
It's still got to be pork.
We use it in a beef intestine, or beef casing,
which is going to give it a unique flavor
as compared to a hog casing for, you know, regular sausage.
It's a heavy smoke.
I'm gonna smoke it a minimum 12, 14 hours.
- 12 or 14 hours.
- And it's a more course grind than a regular sausage.
You know, you'll see fat, you'll see meat.
- That's something we're definitely doing wrong then,
'cause we kinda grind it,
like a normal-- - Like we would--
- Italian sausage. - a normal sausage.
What's a course grind end up doing for the sausage?
- It's just a different texture.
Fat can render without being mixed in, you know,
it can render on its own when you're cooking.
And it absorbs the smoke differently, as well.
- Definitely.
- Than something that is so tight that, you know,
has no room for smoke.
- There's already several different ways that I think we
could improve our own recipe at the shop.
So, I'm excited to learn how you guys do it.
- So, generally what I'm gonna do is,
when I start off with Boston butts,
is I'm gonna have to trim the back fat off.
Otherwise, it would be far too much of a fat content.
- [Ben] What amount of fat content are you guys looking for?
- I usually try to shoot, as far as lean to fat ratio,
anywhere from 80 to 90% lean to 20 to 10%.
- We serve the andouille, we will fry it, cut it thin
and fry chips, and you know, we'll serve it
with creole mustard in the restaurant.
But generally, you're not going to buy andouille just
to eat a stick of andouille at home, you know?
- Okay, yeah, I don't do that.
Definitely don't do that.
- Anyone that wants to buy it for that reason,
please, please do.
But generally, you're going to use it to flavor
a large pot of something.
- That's one hell of a clean shoulder blade man.
- Thank you, I try to get as much as I can.
- You're doing a, you do great job.
You're not moving to New York anytime soon?
- Shut up.
(laughter)
- [Ben] So I'm taking this fat cap off first?
- [Brian] Yes.
- Do you mind if I use your knife?
- Go right ahead.
- [Brent] Why Boston butt?
- That's just the signature cut that Wayne Jacob's
has always used.
It's a heavily-used muscle and from my experience,
I would choose a chuck steak over a tenderloin any day.
Because it's, you might have to do a little more work to it
to get it to be tender, but as far as flavor,
the flavor profile, I mean, you can't beat it.
- You can't beat it.
I know I'm cutting it different from you, Brian.
- I mean there's room for improvement
but I'm still impressed.
- It's better than mine.
- I thought I was building rapport with you
this entire time and you're still gonna give me that?
- [Brian] Oh yeah, I try to be honest.
- Stop being so honest, Brian.
- Now that we have it all butchered,
now's the time to season it.
And our seasoning mix is very simple.
It's just salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and garlic.
Keep it simple so the smoke flavor and the pork
is what you get, you know?
- We need to maybe trim ours back.
Maybe we wrote a 1,000 page book
when we only needed to write a 250 page book.
We have fresh onion, we have mustard, paprika.
- Sometimes less is more.
- [Brent] How much are we making here?
What size batch we got?
- [Brian] This is 150 pounds.
- [Brent] 150 pounds. - [Ben] What the f***.
150 pounds?
- It's packed in there.
- How long is 150 pounds gonna last you?
- So, in the slow season, 150 pounds or 200 pounds
will last us a week.
- In our slow season, we'll do 400 pounds a week.
Fourth of July we'll do 1,000 pounds a week.
- This is just andouille.
We have smoked sausage, plus we have tasso,
plus we have smoked turkey necks,
plus we have-- - Cracklin' jerky.
- Cracklin' jerky.
All that kind of stuff.
- [Brent] So, I want one of these.
- Brent literally couldn't get out of bed this morning,
his back hurt so bad.
And you guys got this thing?
- No, some of us, how all of us still f*** our backs up.
- Definitely, yeah.
- Yeah.
- Okay, so in your busy season,
how many people do you guys have working here?
- I mean, Brian does all the butchering, all the--
- Yeah, it's a team effort.
- New York is not that bad, man.
- It's not that bad, man.
It's pretty cool.
- You'd have no place to park that truck in New York,
so don't even worry about it.
- No, no, no, no, I'll get you a parking spot.
It only costs like 250 bucks a month.
To rent a parking spot.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Damn, okay.
- Next step.
- Brent's gonna mix it up.
You're gonna have a margarita man, you deserve it.
Look at those biceps go.
Wow, look at those shoulders.
Fran, are you getting this?
Look at this shoulder.
He's so strong.
- So, now we're gonna stuff it into the beef casing.
- That's a nice, lovely temperature
you keep your casings at, I appreciate that.
I don't want cold hands.
- No, (chuckles), no offense but I wasn't doing it
keeping you in mind, but it does help it,
to make it more--
- A little bit looser? - Yes, definitely.
- It's a very long casing.
- If you can't fit it all,
don't hesitate to cut off the excess.
- I'll fit it Brian, don't worry about it.
Brian, don't worry about it.
- I'm definitely impressed.
- Let's get this, God--
- [Brent] Louisiana needs their andouille!
- Right there, that's the spot.
- Oh, that's the spot? - That's the spot.
- Oh, I didn't know that, so we gotta an extra,
we got a long boy on our hands.
- That's fine, some people have a big appetite.
- Whew, all in a day's work.
- Whew.
- Everybody, everybody take a break.
- We're here at the smokehouse.
- We are.
- Beautiful smokehouses.
- Yeah, they been here a while and you can see
the heavy use of them, just from around...
Definitely not a natural wood color.
- All that lacquer is natural.
- So, I'm gonna go ahead and see how they're looking.
- Oh my God.
- So, they're not getting any kind of direct heat.
You're just letting it be ambient heat and the smoke
is just kinda hanging.
- Basically, the point that the heat's gonna rise
and then hit the top and then spread out
through the rest of it.
- So, how long have these andouilles been going now?
- These have been going I guess about 8, 10 hours.
It has to in order to get the full smoke penetration
and give it its unique flavor.
I'll come out, check the temp.
You don't want it to be too hot or too low
because too hot has a tendency of melting
and it'll render the fat out too quick.
It's a real testament to low and slow.
You know, I mean it sounds simple and overdone,
but it's true.
Just by the feel, I can tell if it's too hot to the touch,
then it's way too hot, even if I'd only been having
a thermometer.
But they feel fairly warm.
I'm gonna say at least another two or three hours.
They will start to wrinkle up a little bit
and they got a good color.
- Yeah, beautiful color.
- We're taking a bunch of this,
we're gonna buy a bunch of it.
Hope that's cool.
- Oh, definitely, that's why we make it.
- To go to a crawfish boil and I can smell the smoke,
I can smell the meat and it just makes total sense
to me why it would go into a crawfish boil.
But, why is it that andouille ended up being this
integral part of a crawfish boil?
- It compliments all of the things
that are in a crawfish boil.
We cook with andouille and potatoes all the time.
We cook with andouille and corn all the time.
All of the things that are in the crawfish boil,
we already cook with andouille.
- Like the way of a life, just full circle.
- I'm gonna call you every time I have
an emotional breakdown from now on.
And you can just like, circle of life man.
- I don't know how I feel about that.
(laughter)
- [Ben] Wow.
- There he is, buddy!
- [Ben] Buddy!
- Welcome home, boys.
- [Ben] It's been so long, Paul.
- Welcome, what'd you bring?
- Per your recommendation, we went to Wayne Jacob's.
The place was f****** amazing.
- I got two questions.
What's it like back there?
- Picture in your mind, like a gentle wind,
passing through a field of wheat.
That's Brian who works in the back.
And he is a f****** joy to behold.
So, a lot's happening back there, he's a perfect soul.
- Does your andouille stand up to what it's like
to make andouille at Wayne Jacob's?
The spot to make south Louisiana smoked sausage.
- Really felt like some New York a*******.
- You probably get that a lot.
- We make andouille, we don't know anything about andouille.
- The way they do it and even from the grind
to how they're smoking it is different.
We're used to doing it fine, like a regular sausage,
and they don't do that at all.
- Yeah, you can like, when you cut it, you can see
there's chunks.
I love it.
Well, we're gonna put it in the crawfish boil
and that's gonna be awesome.
- Gotta lot of stuff out here that I haven't seen
in a boil before.
- So, we're gonna boil crawfish and a lot
of people have a lot of specific ways that they like
to do what we are going to attempt, and I like to think,
succeed at doing, depending on your school of thought.
We're gonna make some people happy and we're gonna piss
some people off.
I'll preface it by saying, I'm from f****** Virginia,
so don't worry about it.
It's not like I would know better either way.
But what we're gonna do, is we're gonna do the method
where we put a s*** ton of spices in the water
and then that will ideally in turn,
get the juice in the head, and the tail flavored
with a lot of awesome spices.
We got a bunch of s*** on the table,
it's all going to go in the pot with the crawfish.
Why don't we stop wasting time and start cutting
stuff in half?
(propane burner igniting)
- [Ben] There we go.
- Authentic, right?
Authentic.
- [Ben] We should probably go ahead and just say it,
there's no rule book we're following.
- The idea is to make it really spicy, really salty,
and delicious in some way.
Some of this stuff we just found in the fridge.
This stuff I thought I was gonna use in a sauce
but we didn't.
So, that's gonna go in the boil to make it spicy.
It's got a little sugar in it.
I like fish sauce in there, not to make it Asian,
but just because...
- [Brent] Fish sauce rules.
- It makes sense, yeah, it's like salty, fishy stuff
going in a boil with crawfish.
I just bought this thing and I am very excited.
So, we're gonna put that entire bottle in there
and probably about half of this bottle.
So, I wanted it to be a little bit spicier
but we used all the stuff.
So, we're just going to go Crystal hot sauce.
- You want it spicier? Okay.
- Yeah, because like, the only time you're coming in contact
with the liquid and consuming it, is in the head
of the crawfish and there's also all the brains
and stuff that will kind of tamper down the flavor.
And it takes a lot of seasoning to get it into the tail
of the crawfish.
So, this will go for like 10 minutes,
'cause they just, potatoes take a little bit
and then we'll throw in a bunch of vegetables.
I don't think people really do these in boils
but I really love jalapenos and I want to eat them,
so, we're gonna, boop.
- All right, taste this andouille.
- It's the best.
- But it mixes so well,
with everything else we've already put in.
- Agreed.
That's so f****** good.
- The chunks of fat are like creamy awesome.
The only flavor we don't have in there is smoke.
This is gonna bring super hard.
- Man, it's so balanced.
Like, you think it's gonna be brut smoke
when you look at it and you smell it it's so smoky,
but when you eat it, it's like, smooth.
- I think some pork fat, some smoke, we're doing good.
- So, I have no idea if it changes anything to squeeze
the lemons first, but I always do.
- You always do? - I don't know why.
It makes your hands smell nice.
- You also you feel like you're working.
- Yeah, it seems like productive.
- Where are these from?
- These are from my friend, Michelle.
She's got a company called Seafood International.
That's where we get all of our crawfish every year.
She gets them from Breaux Bridge,
which is a city outside of Lafayette.
Lafayette has all the best crawfish
and usually they keep all the best crawfish,
but Michelle sneaks us some good ones.
This is super early in the year and they look
pretty phenomenal for this time of the year.
- Yeah, they're still damn good size.
- Yeah, they're pretty big.
Bigger than I expected, for sure.
I've never used this thing before
but those jets are pretty fast.
It should come up to a boil immediately
and then you want to cut it.
The crawfish are gonna spend a lot more time in the water
with the heat off, than they are coming up to a boil.
So, they're hardly cooked right now.
We don't want them to overcook.
That's why we cut them off before they got all the way up
to a boil.
We want to sit in here and sort of saturate
with all that seasoned liquid water that's in there.
A good sorta like rule, is when some of them start to sink,
that means they've soaked in a ton of stuff.
So, it takes about 30 minutes for that to happen.
You want it to cool down as fast as possible.
I've seen people hose down the outside.
I've seen people even put a whole pot into a bucket of ice.
The quickest way we're gonna do it is
we're gonna throw some frozen corn in there.
It's not going to help a ton but it'll help a little.
It'll cool it down a little faster.
- Should we try one, just to see where they're at?
- Yeah, for sure.
- Where we at? I need to see your technique.
- All right, so obviously you pull the tail off.
- [Ben] Yeah.
It's gonna be pretty hot.
Oh, I normally do that, so don't do that.
(laughter)
- No, that's a shrimp move, this is a crawfish.
He pulled the head off.
- I did it, I did, I re-did it again.
I did it again, same one, it's fine.
- So, you pull the head off and then you're gonna
suck the head and eat the tail.
Earlier in the season, the shells are softer,
so when you suck the head you can crunch it.
So, I'll do like a (pinches crawfish head)
while popping it down and then you can get all the juice.
There's a lot of awesome flavor in the head
but also a lot of the liquid.
And then, some people will go straight to the tail.
What I do is I kinda break off the top layer,
and peel it off, so that you're left with a,
sort of like a half--
- A little nubber. - A little halfie.
And then, if you kinda put your thumb at the bottom
and pinch it, you can kinda suck and use your teeth
to get it all out.
- You don't have to show off.
- Is it done?
- I mean, that's it, but you gotta get all of it out.
You don't want anything left. - I got it, I got it.
I feel like I got it.
- Oh, buddy boy.
- All right, so we got a lot of crawfish.
But I want try the sausage.
- Yeah, yeah, let's try the sausage.
- Maybe cook it a tiny bit less, but it's f****** awesome.
- Still holds up and in fact, I think only got better.
- It did get better.
- I mean, it absorbed a lot of the spice.
It's more spicy, it's more salty.
- You get to eat it against 10 other things.
You got corn to eat it with and potatoes.
You make a little f***** sandwich, chunk of garlic on there.
- Eats like a f****** pork chop now.
- Yeah, big chunks, man. - Yeah.
- It's a chunky boy.
- It doesn't read as much as straight sausage,
like an Italian sausage, totally different.
- If we had ground it like the way we normally grind
andouille, it would have just disintegrated
and been sandy and been f****** disgusting.
This actually works for what it's being used for.
- I mean, I think andouille is the only choice for this.
I don't know any other sausage that would stack up.
- I mean, hot dogs.
I'm just kidding, yeah, you're right.
(laughter)
Andouille's the one.
- Thank you so much.
This has been f****** amazing. - Hell yeah!
- I'm so stoked.
- Oh yeah, eat a little dumpling.
- Oh, okay.
- Okay, party starts now!
You can eat all the crawfish!