Miasmatic Review

Over the last month I had been talking about bar-b-que at work. Either it was good bar-b-que I had eaten or stuff that I had made. When I was talking about some smoked sausages I made last week, a couple of my employees asked me when I was going to “shut up or put up” meaning, when was I going to stop talking about how good it was and let them sample what I was talking about. The problem is that it’s time intensive and hard to bring to work. That is until today.

We had a baby shower for one of my employees. To go with the baby shower we decided to have a potluck. Anyone that has ever worked or works for my company knows that they will have a potluck any chance they get. “Look it’s going to rain next week, we should have a potluck”. Anyway, since this was for an actual good reason I thought I could take the time to make a nice bar-b-que treat for all of them. Wednesday, while working from home, I made smoked sausages between reviews. Once they had smoked for a good 4 hours, I coated each link in sauce and let it crisp.

Last night after the sausages cooled, I sliced them into bite size bits and put the remainder of the sauce on them. Then over a low heat in the oven this morning I re-heated them. I didn’t make a lot, just because it was kind of expensive and they were spicy. At work I placed them on the table, with a warning label, so that no one got a heated surprise.

The best was when my employee that had been the most vocal about my bringing these sausages in actually tried one; she about coughed up a lung. I told her repeatedly they were spicy. But she didn’t listen. She took one of the chunks popped it into her mouth and started eating. Her eyes started watering and she started coughing and gasping for air. I about fell over in laughter. But her review of them was what I was hoping for. “They taste really good…” Then she added, “But they are too spicy for me.” Not everyone felt the same way. A lot of people really liked them; they ate most of the bowl. Everyone that liked it stated it would taste better on bread.

For too many of the people I had made them way to spicy. Even one lady that I work with that loves hot and spicy food thought it was a little excessive. But she made the observation that “It’s not spicy hot just to be hot. It’s hot because the flavor dictates it needs to be hot.” Which she translated into IE if you made them any milder you would throw off the flavor combination that made them so good.

Hell, I’m happy with that.