Sausages are, on the surface, the most recognizable product of the butcher’s art–oblong and uniform packages of minced meat encased in the scrubbed entrails of a hog or beef or sheep. Sausages comfort us with their familiarity. Yet within lurks mystery.

I’m not talking about what nightmarish bobbles and bits might be making up the meat within a sausage. Honestly made links are all made with meat you would be happy to eat unground, and those that are made with offal, such as the Greek kokoretsi, tell you as much up front. No, the mystery is deeper than that; it is the mystery of taste and texture and how each is achieved.

Sausage-making is jazz. It is an improvisation of meat and fat and spices, all within the regular confines of a six-inch link. Each butcher riffs off his teachers, his mentors. No good butcher’s take on even the old standards such as bratwurst or “sweet Italian” is identical to that of his neighbor. Sausage is about expression, about style. Newcomers or the timid may stray but a little from safe and sane recipes. Others launch themselves on wild forays into the unknown: Bay Area sausage king Bruce Aidells--who brought us oddities such as chicken-and-apple sausages–for example, is the Thelonious Monk of charcutiers.

Then there are butchers like Sacramento’s Dirk Muller, owner of Morant’s Old Fashioned Sausage Kitchen. Unlike Aidells, Muller is a classicist; a man who revels in his place as a master of sausage styles that have lasted a millennium. He is the reason others will pursue his recipes after he is gone.

Muller earned his status over more than two decades. After knocking about in the trade for a few years in Southern California, Muller traveled to Germany on a lark--he wanted to see his parents’ native country and pick up a few tips on being a proper German butcher. That lark turned into five years of training and apprenticeship. Muller may be the only German- certified butcher in the region, and his meats show that mastery.

His menu card offers a dizzying array of charcuterie: Westphalia ham, landjaeger, weisswurst, braunschweiger, bratwurst, blutwurst, and even boerwors from South Africa. Muller even offers oddities such as Swedish potato sausage, fleischkase (a baked German bologna), as well as Pomeranian teewurst, which is a sort of spreadable smoked meat packed in a casing. Muller even ventures outside of the Northern European tradition with Louisiana andouille, both Basque and Mexican styles of chorizo, Portuguese linguica, and that bedrock sausage, sweet Italian.

I had heard of Muller’s place, which he bought from a Swiss immigrant named Ferdinand Morant eighteen years ago, and I finally made the pilgrimage a few weeks back. I knew he was good, but I wanted to see just how good. I also make sausage, and friends consider me reasonably competent at it. But after talking with Muller and eating his work, I felt like nothing
more than a gifted high school saxophonist meeting John Coltrane.

Making sausage is not easy. Yes, making the rustic, coarse-grained Italian sausage, linguica, or Greek loukaniko can be grasped within a few attempts; they are essentially a good hamburger crammed into a casing and twisted into links. And such sausage is hugely tasty, especially over a hardwood fire. Now think about a hot dog: a hot dog is an emulsified sausage, as are most of the styles Muller creates. Whipping together the proper ratio of meat to fat to ice-cold liquid into a stable emulsion, and then stuffing them tightly, poaching them, and maybe even smoking them–all at precise temperatures– is not so simple a task. 

Look at it this way: eating a country sausage is like eating a burger. Eating most emulsified sausages is like eating a terrine. Eating the finest emulsified sausages is like eating a mousse; it is an ethereal experience.

My first real encounter with this magic was in the basement of my ex-wife’s uncle, Casey. Casey was a hunter and made both venison sausage as well as surpassing bratwurst. He showed me how to mix the meat and fat and how important it was to get everything as close to freezing as possible so it doesn’t heat up too much when you mix it. And mix it. And mix it. I can still remember Casey saying, “Mix it up real good. And when you think you’re finished, mix it up again.”

I still have Casey’s recipe for bratwurst and in the ensuing years, had not eaten a better brat until I ate one of Muller’s Sheboygan-style links. Casey’s sausages were rich and soul-satisfying, but they were and are, even when I make them now, rustic. Muller has taken all of that rustic deliciousness and refined it into something luxurious. He is a master of how much spice to add and how tight to grind the meat. His German training shines through. But Muller is even prouder of his Chicago Polish sausages. He developed them after a customer brought in his grandmother’s recipe. Polish are a garlicky, coarser version of the traditional Sheboygan bratwurst–bratwurst is a generic term meaning “grilling sausages,” Muller notes–and Sheboygan brats are a coarser version of weisswurst, which are highly refined, emulsified veal and pork fat sausages. Weisswurst is best served poached.

Which brings me to this point: a good sausage, such as one of Muller’s, really needs little else. Trust me on this one. Mediocre sausages can be improved with heavy sauces or that classic combo of grilled peppers and onions. And don’t get me
wrong, I eat sausages topped with sauces or peppers and onions regularly; I might even use one of Muller’s Italian links, although they’re not as good as Manny and Sol’s Italian links from the Orangevale Meat Shoppe. But one of Muller’s Sheboygan brats or Polish sausages should stand alone, with only a light smear of horseradish or mustard to act as its rhythm section.

Such sausages cannot be rushed, either. They take time to make and should take time to cook too. It is impossible to cook a sausage too slowly, and very easy to burn them. And nothing is better than fresh sausages coaxed into doneness off to one corner of a smoky barbecue. Doing so develops what Germans call knacken-that pop you get when you first bite into a link cooked this way.

Inspired from my pilgrimage to Morant's, I rushed home to make a batch of my own links. And like Muller's finest work, I would attempt the tricky emulsified sausages that mark the butcher's most refined work. But I'm not a German butcher; my expertise is in Mediterranean food. So I reread recipes from my charcuterie books and decided to modify Muller's weisswurst using the Greek seasonings oregano, thyme, lemon zest, white pepper, and lots of garlic. With Casey's "mix it up real good" in my head and the taste of Muller's links on my lips, I whipped the sausages-literally-into shape.

Ah, my shining hour! These sausages were smooth, zesty, and as light as air. All they needed as an accompaniment was a squeeze of lemon juice. I felt like I'd graduated.

A former commercial fisherman and line cook, Hank Shaw has written for Gastronomica, the Art of Eating and Meatpaper. He pays the bills as a political correspondent, however, and is now Sacramento Bureau Chief for the Record of Stockton. Visit him at his blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook: www.honest-food.net.