Smoked Country Sausage

One of my earliest recollections of life in the tiny village of Sunflower, Mississippi, where I was born was of the smokehouse used in late fall and early winter by my father for smoking hams and homemade sausage. I remember the structure and I remember the smells. The following is my version—my recollection of the taste—of the sausages that he cured in that smokehouse. We moved to a larger town when I was very young and he never cured or smoked meats thereafter.