Legnon’s Boucherie
410 Jefferson Terrace
New Iberia, LA 70560
(337) 367-3831

“We have a lot of people that come, like oil field salesmen; they’ll pick up, you know, maybe 10--15 pounds and bring it to customers, and that’s the way it’s done around here. That’s how they treat them, I guess, is bring them food.” – Ted Legnon

Ted Legnon was a teenager when he began making boudin. The home boucheries of his childhood, whole-family events, must have made an impact because today his is recognized as some of the finest boudin in the New Iberia area. For evidence, note the roughly 1,500 pounds of boudin that he and his staff at Legnon’s Boucherie produce daily. The ingredients: Boston butt, pork trimmings, pork liver, long grain rice (in a 1:1 meat-to-rice ratio), seasoning vegetables, dried seasonings, and what Ted describes as his competitive spirit. The shop is busiest in the morning, and Ted says that most customers eat his boudin for breakfast, but they come also for the many other sausages made in-house—fresh pork sausage, fresh chicken sausage, smoked sausage, andouille, and crawfish boudin—as well as a well-stocked meat case and ready-made beef and chicken patties. On a busy weekend, they sell through 2,000 patties per day. Ted doesn’t worry about job security. “Our boudin sales have been increasing steadily, you know,” he says.

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.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Ted Legnon
Date: August 14, 2008
Location: Legnon’s Boucherie—New Iberia, LA
Interviewer: Sara Roahen

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Sara Roahen:  This is Sara Roahen for the Southern Foodways Alliance. It’s Thursday, August 14, 2008. I’m in New Iberia, Louisiana at Legnon’s, if I’m pronouncing that correctly.

Ted Legnon:  Correct. Legnon’s Boucherie.

Could I ask you to say your name and your birth date?

My name is Ted Legnon. My birth date is August 25, 1954.

Okay, and can you say in your own words what you do for a living?

We have a retail meat market here and we pretty much specialize in boudin and sausage, and you know we also have all cuts of meat, but pretty much specialize in boudin and sausage and Cajun foods.

So that word boucherie on your title—what does that mean?

Butchering.

What is your heritage?

Well I grew up in the next little town over actually, and then you know we’re just pretty much common people, and I took this up after—you know, a job after school it started off with and kind of grew from there. [I] just pretty much always had the desire to do this type of thing and I just stuck with it, you know.

What was the little town one town over?

Jeanerette.

On either your mom or dad’s side of the family or both, are you Cajun, French, German?

Yeah. French, uh-huh, on both sides of the family French.

So tell me a little bit about how long you’ve had this place.

I’ve been in business about 27 years, you know on my own, and I’ve been doing this for about 36 years total.

This space feels really new. Is it new?

Yeah. It’s--we’ve been in this building about six and a half years.

Where were you before that?

We were about—we were more towards the middle of town in a more of a neighborhood type thing. And it was a much smaller store than this, and you know it was an old store and I made—and we stayed there about over 20 years.

Tell me a little bit if you can about your boudin. I’ve heard in a lot of places that this is the best, and I’m wondering if you can tell me why you think that is.

Well one of the reasons, I think, [is] we make it the best way we can. And we make it fresh every day. I mean it’s made every day and--and we just put the rice seasoning in it. We have a recipe that, you know, and we stick to it and we just try and do things right; that’s our number one thing is to make it right. And I know a lot of places, they try and make it just to make more money on it, and we don't even think about that. We just make it and try to make it on volume, you know, and which we’re doing fine with it.

And what do you mean by make it right? Do you mean certain ingredients or—?

Yeah, we use good ingredients to start off with you know. We don't put anything that’s too fat or anything, or too much gristle or anything, and like I said, make it fresh.

Can you tell me a little bit about the process?

Yeah, we get here about 4:30, 5 o'clock in the morning and we start, and usually we finish making the boudin about—usually, hopefully—9:00 or 10 o'clock we’re completely finished, and that’s making about 1,400 or 1,500 pounds. But the process starts off, we--we cook the meat; it just kind of smothers down, boils type thing and cooked, and then it’s—the meat is strained. And then the meat is ground and mixed with the cooked rice and seasoning—you know, onions, bell peppers, and garlic and everything. And then it’s mixed together and then it’s put into a stuffer and we stuff it into the casing.

I don't want you to divulge any family secrets, but can you tell me what kind of cut of meat you use?

We use like Boston butt; about 90-percent of it is Boston butt, and some trimmings—you know different trimmings, but it’s mostly a Boston butt.

What do you mean by trimmings?

Just little pieces of—it might be cut in pork chops one day, and it might have a few that’s kind of irregular or something and we just put that in--in the boudin.

What kind of grain of rice do you use?

We use the long grain rice. We have some commercial rice cookers, gas rice cookers. Yeah, each pot cooks 55 cups at a time.

How did you develop your boudin recipe?

Just started, you know, kind of small and just watching other people doing it, and then kind of put my own recipe together. Real simple. I mean it’s the easiest thing in the world to make, you know—to me.

It’s funny because boudin makers tell me that, but then boudin eaters are very specific about their tastes of boudin.

Uh-hm. I think they have—probably just in South Louisiana they might have, I don't know, 200--250 people that might make it I would think; I don't know. And I think they only have a handful of good ones, to tell you the truth. [Laughs]

What your proportion of meat to rice?

We use about half rice and about half meat.

And your vegetable seasoning, your celery and your green pepper and your onion—do you put those in raw or do you cook them first?

They’re a little bit cooked. We put them in raw with the rice, and the juice and the meat is so hot it--it cooks them without being overcooked.

And so do you consider boudin similar to rice dressing?

Yeah, that’s what I would consider it: rice dressing in a casing.

When you were growing up, did you eat boudin?

Yeah, uh-hm, and when I was growing up we grew up out in the country and you know I still remember, I was real young and, you know, killing the hog that was in a pen in the back and--and making the cracklins and the boudin, but I was really too young to make it. I mean we made it like once a year for—that was about all we did. My aunts and uncles would come and it was kind of—well, actually, they called it a boucherie. You know, getting together—a couple of families together and killing animals and making boudin, and a little bit of sausage.

What would the kids be doing while the parents were dealing with that?

Most of the kids, their job was just like to gather the wood and put under the pot—you know sticks out in the pasture or something—and keep the fire going. That was--that was our job, you know, but I was probably at the time between six and ten years-old, somewhere in that area.

Do you remember what your favorite thing to eat on boucherie day was?

The boudin and cracklins [Laughs].

So after they stopped doing that, or even during that, on what occasion would you go buy boudin?

We--like I say, we lived out in the country and had the store four or five miles from us, and then they would make boudin and we’d go over there and get some, you know for—you know like once a week or so we’d get a little pack of boudin.

What did your parents do for a living?

My mother was just a housewife and my father worked at the salt mine, at the local salt mine over here.

Oh, not—Avery Island?

Avery Island, uh-huh.

What time of day in here is the busiest?

It’s hard to say, you know. Generally we’re busier in the morning than the afternoon, most of the time. You know, from 6:30 in the morning until noon is usually our busiest time.

Do people eat boudin in the morning?

Oh yeah. That’s their favorite time to eat boudin. We sell more in the morning than we do in the afternoon. A lot of people eat it for breakfast—you know, a late breakfast, early dinner type thing. And we have a lot of people that come, like oil field salesmen; they’ll pick up, you know, maybe 10--15 pounds and bring it to customers, and that’s the way it’s done around here. That’s how they treat them, I guess, is bring them food.

What about, do you make any other sausage here?

Yeah, we make fresh sausage. You know, pork sausage; we also make chicken sausage; we make our own smoked sausage; we make andouille.

And what’s the difference between smoked sausage and andouille?

Not a whole lot of difference. But there is some difference. The andouille is a much coarser ground meat, and it’s almost chunks of meat, and has a little extra garlic flavor in it, you know, and it’s a much bigger casing. Usually--usually it’s a beef casing, which is pretty big in diameter compared to the smoked sausage. And the smoked sausage is just like a regular ground sausage and it’s just smoked.

In this area, when people are making gumbo for example, is it—do people tend to use fresh sausage or smoked sausage?

They use some of each. We have more people that uses the smoked sausage in their gumbo.

I haven’t met very many female boudin makers. Have you?

Well we have one back there. [Laughs] She was in her own business at one time, her and her husband. And her husband passed away and she kept the business a couple years after he passed away, and it--it got too tough for her and she called me looking for a job and I was glad to have her. So she’s the cracklin’ maker, and she--and she helps us make boudin.

What about owner-operators? Do you know any women?

No. She was--she was probably one of the few that they had left, I guess.

Also African American owner-operator boudin makers, I haven’t met. Have you?

No, I haven’t.

Have you heard anything about the origins of boudin?

Well from the stories that—and things that I heard and can put together—it was really a--I’d guess you would say a poor man’s meal, the servants and stuff. The richer people would—you know when they would kill a hog they would eat the better cuts of meat and they, the servants, probably slaves, chopped all of the, you know, maybe the liver and whatever they could scrap up I guess, and they mixed it with the rice and before you knew it they would put it in a casing and made a sausage out of that. And that—I think that’s how boudin came about actually.

It can be a very hearty meal.

Yeah. Yeah, you have meat and you have—you know usually most people put a little bit of pork liver in it.

Do you do that?

Yes, we put some pork liver.

You don't do any seafood boudin or anything, do you?

We do a crawfish boudin. I guess the best way to explain that is I would call it a crawfish étouffée in a casing. You know it’s pretty simple to make.

And do you use the same trinity of vegetables?

Yes, uh-hm.

How long have you been doing that?

The crawfish boudin, probably about 15 or so years. We had a couple people that asked me about it and they—.  Somebody—I don't want to say any names—they said they were selling so many pounds of such and such, and--and I stopped there one day and I got a piece and I thought it was horrible. I said, If he can sell this I know I can, and I just started from there. And I started off, and now we sell—probably sell around, you know, 700 or 800 pounds a week.

What about the other things in your meat case—what’s your best-seller in the meat case?

I would think sausage, and then we sell a lot of patties, you know beef patties or hamburgers ready-made and seasoned. And also the chicken patties made with chicken meat, and it’s made into a patty and we sell quite a bit of it, sometimes 2,000 of them a day on--on a weekend like on a Saturday. We--quite a few times we’ve sold 2,000 or better.

What about when a place like a Super Wal-Mart opens up or a big supermarket—does it hurt you?

At my other location a Super [Wal-Mart] opened up and we felt it for a couple of weeks and then we was back to normal you know. In fact to be honest with you I wish I could move into Wal-Mart’s parking lot.

Because you’d get more traffic?

Yes, yeah. In fact, you know Wal-Mart is straight down this street and I think that’s one good thing about our location here. You know this street goes right on the side of Wal-Mart, and I think it helps us out.

Do you feel that people are eating more or less boudin over time?

Well our boudin sales have been increasing steadily you know. It seems like they eat more. [Laughs] They eat more over here anyway. I don't know about the other places but they—you know we keep increasing.

What is your favorite part about coming to work?

Just the--the process of doing it from start to finish and getting it completed and, you know, staying ahead on everything and getting the customers taken care of.

So one final question: Do you eat the casing or not?

I don't. Some people do but I don't, you know. I just bite it and pull it out.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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