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Babineaux’s Slaughter House & Meat Market C. Hebert's Slaughter House & Meat Market Coleman's Sausage & Specialty Meats Eunice Superette & Slaughterhouse |
Hebert’s Slaughter House & Meat Market “All the seven steaks over here have bone. Just about every cut of meat over here has bones in it except we have a boneless beef roast. But other than that, everything has bones it, so you won't come here and find boneless pork loin and all that. We don't do that. Everything has got the bones in it.” – Beverly Giardelli Beverly Giardelli grew up so close to the boudin at C. Hebert’s Slaughter House & Meat Market that she hardly even remembers eating it as a young girl. Her mother worked at the market, her cousins worked at the market. Everyone in town, it seems, spent weekends across the highway from the market, where its founding owner, Clement Hebert, also ran a bush track for horse racing. It took Beverly several decades and a long spell living in Chicago with her horse trainer husband to find her own place at the Abbeville market, but she’s now ensconced as the head boudin maker there. Every employee—from the butcher to the current owner, Junior Luquette—pitches in to aid the boudin production, but ultimately Beverly is the only one whose hands and palate guide it every step of the way. Now employing its third generation of Hebert relations (fourth if you include the children who hang around after school and on weekends, bagging cracklin’ and fetching ingredients), C. Hebert’s is one of the few true slaughterhouses left in southwest Louisiana. And, because it is a slaughterhouse, C. Hebert’s boudin contains parts of the pig—the trimmings and the innards—unavailable to boudin shops that rely on commercial pork shoulders and butts. NOTE: What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Subject: Beverly Giardelli, boudin maker
----- Sara Roahen: This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Monday, August 11, 2008. I am in Abbeville, Louisiana, with Miss Beverly—I’m going to let her say her name. [Laughs] Could you say your name and your birth date and then tell me—describe for me what you do for a living? Beverly Giardelli: My name is Beverly Giardelli. I was born November 1, 1952. I work at Hebert’s Meat Market. I make boudin; I make sausage—just kind of like do a little bit of everything inside the meat market. All workers do that. There’s no set job for any certain person. Everybody pitches in? Right, everybody helps out everybody and everybody works together. So can you begin by telling me how long you’ve worked here and what your connection is with this place that brought you here? Well the connection of the place is my uncle, that originally opened the place probably about 50 years ago, was probably one of the first meat markets they had around here. When he originally opened up he slaughtered like one calf and put it behind a wagon and—with a horse-driven wagon and go downtown and just sell meat as he’d kill it. And then it just got bigger and bigger. And then his daughter and her husband was working with him like, probably about 45 years—40 years—they worked together. And his daughter passed away and her husband took over, and I’m sure as soon as Mr. Junior retires—he’s got three kids, and I’m sure they’re probably going to take over the business. But I lived in Chicago, moved away from here years ago and I came back [to Abbeville] about 14 years [ago]. When I started working [at the meat market] I didn’t even know what cut of meat it was. I had no idea what a t-bone looked like, what a sirloin looked like; I had no idea what kind of meat was what. But I just kept watching and learning and finally one day they showed me how to make the boudin and now I make the boudin for them and help them out any way that I can. You know, and I enjoy doing it. You meet a lot of people, meet a lot of strange people, meet a lot of friendly people, but you meet a lot of strange people too. Any time you work with the public I’m sure you’re going to meet all types of people, and I enjoy being with the public, so—that’s one thing I really enjoy about it. Can you tell me what your uncle’s name was? My uncle’s name was Clement Hebert [French pronunciation of both names]. They would probably say Clement [American pronunciation, hard t] in New Orleans or up North, and they would probably say Hebert [American pronunciation, hard t]. And the elderly people would call it either Clem’s or Clay-mon’s; that was the two nicknames that they had for it because his name was Mr. Clement Hebert, so they would just nickname the place and the elderly people would say it in French. So instead of saying Clement they would say Clay-mon. And then Mr. Junior who you mentioned, can you explain to me what his relationship is to you? Mr. Junior was my first cousin’s husband. Miss Margie, his deceased wife, and I were first cousins. Her father and my mother were brother and sister and she really ran the place and she was like the rock of the place. And she caught cancer and passed away and she was only like 51, so it was—it was really a hard thing for everybody here [emotional] but everybody knows that she would have wanted the place to go on. So everybody just kind of—the same workers are--are still here and everybody—the kids are all here working now, and I’m sure she probably would be proud of what they did. They just kept the place running and kept the place going after all these years. ------ Do you know—do you by any chance know what year the place opened? Oh I have no idea. If I would have to take a guess I would guess maybe 1959 or ’60—maybe, right around there, because I spoke to Mr. Clement’s wife. She’s—she’s sick now; she’s elderly and she’s sick, and I had spoke to her before she was sick and she told me that they had lost a child when their child was like 12 or 13 years-old, and he [Clement] was severely depressed. So she told him, Why don't we open a meat market, and it will keep him occupied. So the business kind of originally started, from what she told me, was to keep his mind occupied so he wouldn’t be depressed. And who would have dreamed that now, all these years later, that now it’s like one of the few meat markets they have left around here? By meat market, you mean a place that slaughters animals and has fresh meat? Yeah, we slaughter. We sell fresh meat in the showcase. They buy local animals from a cattle sale and a lot of the farmers that have animals that they raise—they raise pigs, they raise cattle, sheep, and they--they don't have a place to slaughter them. So they bring the animals in here alive and we have a slaughterhouse in the back and they slaughter the animals. And then we also—they let us know how they want to cut and wrap their meat and we cut it and we wrap it to whatever portion size they want. We label everything and they pick it up and it’ll be--it’ll be--we can freeze it for them if they want. Okay, and they have a butcher that’s here. They’ve been having the same butcher here for pretty near 40 years, and most of the employees that are here have been her—I’ve only been here like maybe 14 years, but the majority of the workers—Mr. Junior has been here about 45; Miss Lorraine has been here about 35; Mr. Butch that does—slaughters the animals—has been here like, 39 I think he said this morning. But everybody has been here so long everybody kind of knows what to do so it’s not like you have to have somebody leaning over your head and telling you, You have to do this and you have to do that. So everybody is really close; we’re kind of like a big family. Sometimes we fight like a big family, but you know we argue because we’re so close to each other and we’re here 10 hours a day with each other so it’s--it’s really like they’re your family. You know you go home and you have your real family at home, but these are the people you spend the most of the time with. ----- I’ve been watching you all day doing your work and it takes a lot of physical strength. What kinds of jobs did you do before this? Well years ago my husband was a racehorse trainer, so I’d work with the racehorses. I’d work in the barn—in the barn area; I’ve waited on tables. I’ve—even in Chicago I’ve had a little kitchen where—they called it the Jock’s Kitchen—where the jockeys would come and eat and I’d cook for them and—. But I guess you just do what you have to do because you just—something needs to be done, and if there’s nobody around to do it you just go ahead and do it and finish with it. ----- One reason I was excited to talk to you was that I haven’t—you’re the first woman boudin maker that I’ve found so far on the Boudin Trail. How did you become the one to make the boudin? Well I just learned how to do it, and it’s not really one person that makes boudin. It’s kind of like a group that does it because you have to boil the meat and somebody puts the meat to boil; and then you have to take it out and let it cool off; and then you get—you have to take all the bones out of the meat that you just cooked and the meat needs to be ground and you have to add your seasoning to it; and then it has to all be mixed and put in the--in the stuffer. So when they say I make the boudin, I really don't make the boudin by myself. It’s a group of people that do it, but I do use the stuffer and there’s other people that if they’re not real busy they can do it also. But I usually do the majority of it. I usually make the majority of the boudin, so—. Yeah, you put the seasoning in there too? Yeah, yeah I kind of put the seasoning in there you know. It’s like, how do those old Cajun cooks say, A little bit of this and a little bit of that. There’s no one cup or three cups or—you just throw a big scoop of this and a big scoop of that and that’s just the way you measure it, just—. I can kind of like by looking at it see about how much salt and pepper that it needs, so I don't really measure anything. There’s not like a quart of something or a quart of something else. I just throw it all in there and wish it well. And then Mr. Junior usually is usually the final tester. We’ll go ahead and let him taste it before I put it in the casing, and if he says Okay it’s good, okay then; we go ahead and stuff it and put it in the casing. So today he said, Okay, it’s good. Does he ever say, Oh no, that needs more salt or—? Yes, quite a few times he would say, Oh no salt, add some salt. So then whenever he does say that, well I usually sneak behind him and I go ask everybody else, Here taste this, taste this, and do you think this it’s okay? And if they say, Oh there’s enough salt, well I’ll say Okay, I’ll just put a little bit more salt. But if they say, Oh, it needs a lot of salt, well then I’ll just go ahead and get a big scoop and pour the salt in. I said he usually gives the final say, but we usually go behind his back and let everybody test it to see how it is and make sure everybody kind of has the same opinion on how good it is or--or if it needs more seasoning to it. Can you tell me what parts of the pig that you put in the boudin? Well we use all the pork debris; we use that. Some people don't know but there is pork liver in it. We use the—like the trimmings of the--of the pork meat. Whenever you want to make a pretty cut of meat you have to take some of the gritty meat or the fatty meat off and you take that out and you put that in boudin. They have the pork shank—that’s the bottom of the pig’s leg. And there’s the shank bone in there. So whenever you do boil the boudin it makes like a thick broth and there’s pork debris and pretty much mostly—well, it is all pork but different things, like you know it might sound kind of funny but they use hog heads. Now I’m not talking about the eyeballs and the teeth and the ears and all that stuff, but they--they do have a lot of meat on a hog head so they cut that up in pieces and boil that. And they take the things out—and I’m not talking about the brain either, so I don't want people to think, Oh, my God; they look at a pig and they see his nose and his teeth and everything and they say, Oh my God, I’m eating that. No, that’s not how it is. It’s all clean meat, and they take the teeth out and the nose out and the ears off and it’s just the inside of the hog head where they have meat in it. Can you describe for me what debris is? The debris is usually, well it is the insides of a pig. On the insides of a pig they have the heart, they have the liver, they have the spleen—they call it the melt. They have kidneys, they have intestines, but we don't use that. It’s against the law for us to keep that or for us to try to sell the pork intestines. Now we can sell the calf intestines, but there has to be a meat inspector there to make sure that we can only sell the--the good product, the clean product. That is the debris; that consists of the debris. That’s the insides of a pig. And then we use, like, ribs; they’ll put in pork ribs sometimes with the skin on it, and so [boudin is] mostly meat and rice, with the mixture of the broth and the texture. You just kind of like have to go by whatever you feel is the right texture, you know. Can you tell me where you get the rice and what kind you get, the grain? We--we were getting the medium-grain rice, but they said they couldn’t get any. I think I prefer the medium-grain rice because the long-grain rice kind of like falls—goes—separates and everything. And we get our rice from Planter’s Rice Mill in Abbeville. We buy them by 50-pound sacks, and we get like 1,500 pounds at a time. We cook the rice the old-fashioned way; we don't have a rice cooker. I’ll cook the rice and I don't use a rice cooker or pre-measured things; I just scoop the rice in the great big Magnalite pots and I just wash it up real good and I just fill it up and somehow or another it always comes out okay, but sometimes I burn it when I get too busy and I forget about it. Yeah, I do smell up the place a little bit sometimes but the majority of the time the rice is okay. ----- In an average day how many animals will be slaughtered here? It varies. It varies. It all depends if the farmers bring them in. We’ve done so much as eight calves and ten pigs a day to where we’ve done maybe just two sheep and two calves a day. For the slaughterhouse, we kill them as we need them; we don't stock up a whole bunch of meat and let it go bad. If we need to slaughter calves they’ll slaughter two or three calves one day, and the in a couple days if they see they’re running short on meat they’ll slaughter some more. So it’s always fresh meat that they sell. And you can come in and if there’s something you don't see they can cut it for you, and if it’s the wrong thickness that’s in the showcase you can ask them and they’ll be more than glad to cut the thickness of meat you want. So it’s kind of like a custom meat market; you know, you come in here and order what you want and they’ll cut it for you. Well we paused earlier so that you could talk to a customer who wanted a custom job on some sausage. Right, right. You have people call. They might say they want to order like 10 pounds of boudin with no pepper, a little bit of salt, so we do that too. And this one customer called and he wanted—he wants 20 pounds of sausage but he doesn’t want any black pepper, just a little bit of salt and vinegar. He wants a lot of vinegar in it, so he called and ordered that. So whenever they need a special order—like some people can't eat pepper—they’ll call up and order it and I’ll be glad to make it for them. I mean we make it for them if they special order something—they want the seasoning different than what we sell. Have you tried that vinegar sausage? Yeah, it’s okay. I mean yeah, it’s not bad. It--it has like a little tangy taste to it but it’s not bad. ----- When you were growing up, your mom worked here a little bit? Yeah my mother worked here years ago, and I think it was comments like, Oh I used to make $25 a week, so you can about imagine how long ago this was. I was probably a child myself. I’m sure at one time or another Mr. Clement probably hired most of his brothers and sisters—worked here along the line through the years. The majority of them probably did, and--and then they’d work here a little while or they’d get another job or they’d move on or they’d get too old to work and they’d just move on. So this meat market has employed a lot of people through all the years that they’ve had it open. ----- Can you tell me a little bit about the red boudin, because you’re one of a few places that still makes that? The red boudin is made with blood, okay. We use the real blood; we try to fool some of these people that come in here and they say, Oh what is that made of? And we say, Oh, food coloring. Why don't you taste it? You know, and after they got a mouthful they’ll say, Oh it’s pretty good, and then we say, Oh it’s blood, and they’re like Oh my God, I just ate blood. But it’s not red; it’s not like eating raw blood or anything. We still use the—it’s either the calf or the pig blood that they will use. It has to go through a stainless steel process whenever they--they get the blood from the animals. The meat inspector has to be there watching. Everything is done under sterile conditions so there’s no need to be worried about, Oh the blood is contaminated, or whatever. They add a little salt into it while it’s fresh and warm, so it stops it from clabbering, because if you wouldn’t the blood would just turn to clabber. And they keep it in the cooler and we use--use it as needed. Now the blood sausage, the blood boudin is the same thing as the white except we take the white boudin and we just mix it with blood and add more seasoning to it to make it a little bit more—it’s got a tangier taste to it with the red. But people say we’re one of the few places that still make it; that’s what they tell us. I don't know. But I think a lot of it has to do—you can't buy the blood, so if you don't have your own slaughterhouse you can't get the blood to make the red boudin. And they have a rumor going around: they had people saying, Oh, I heard it was against the law to make red boudin. It’s not against the law, but you have to have the meat inspector here and it has to be done under sanitary conditions and stuff, so—. And tell me what it was like the first time you made that. Oh my God, I don't know if I was terrified or if I was nauseated. I was sick. Just the thought of me mixing my hand up in some blood, you know, and then--. I got over it though, but I mean the first week or so it was like, I can't believe I’m doing this. I can't believe I’m doing this. But after you kind of make up your mind you know and say, Look, this is not going to hurt you; this is nothing bad or anything, you know. You’re fixing food and you kind of adjust to it. But when I first saw it I was—I couldn’t believe I was ever going to be able to do that. But it’s okay now; it’s all right now. Is there a typical blood boudin customer? Everybody eats it, you know. They have kids that eat it; they have the elderly people that eat it. I mean there’s no certain [rule] like 40 to 50 year-olds eat it only, you know. No. They even have young kids that eat it, so I think it’s all according to what they like and how it tastes. If they like the taste of it they’ll eat it. I don't think there’s no age group or anything like that that would make one person more—a certain type of person eat it more than another. ----- It seems like your family is really tight to this area, so you were maybe a little bit unusual moving away for that long. But now that you’ve moved back you’re like really steeped in your—in the culture here. Do you think about that, like maintaining your own—your native culture while you’re working here? Not really, I just look at it as a job. You know I--I don't look at it as anything being cultural or like that. I’m sure now that you mention it, I’m sure it is. But you know, like when I was in Chicago and had that little--little kitchen that I cooked in and I was just cooking normal food like over here and they were like, Wow! This is Cajun stuff. Like rice dressing or crawfish etouffee or jambalaya, and this was all stuff that I’m like, Wow, I can't believe they’re freaking out over this kind of food. And I’m like, I cook this all the time. So yeah, it—now when I look back at it, yeah, it is a cultural thing around here like the type of food we eat and the way we cook and it is pretty cultural. ----- Okay, one more question: what is it that you like most about your current job? I think mostly working with the general public. I love working with the public because you see all types of people and I really enjoy working with the general public. And it’s kind of a laid back place, like the boss isn't blowing down your neck all the time and it’s—everybody has been here for so long and we’re like a big family. So you’re kind of like, you have your family at work and then you have your family at home. So I think that’s--that’s the main thing, you know. I enjoy working here because—it’s hard work, now. Don't let me kid you. [Laughs] It’s not easy but it’s--it’s a good place to work. It really is. ----- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Home | Introduction | Map | Oral Histories | About & Contact
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