 SAUCIER’S
SAUSAGE KITCHEN
John Saucier
Saucier’s Sausage Kitchen
2064 Saucier Rd.
Mamou, LA 70554
(337) 457-2699
“Well the boudin, we’ve got to use the
hog jaw, the belly, the meat, and the liver and the heart, the kidney—we
put all that in there, all the good stuff and you grind all that.
And you put the rice in there and the green parsley, green onions,
and head of onions, and we put all that in that boudin. That’s
the only way we make our boudin.”
— John Saucier
Born in 1941, John Saucier grew up on a farm in Plaisance,
Louisiana. He learned the Cajun boucherie tradition of slaughtering
hogs, how to preserve meat, and how to tend a garden. He carried
these lessons into his adult life. Even when working as a custodian,
supporting a family of his own in Mamou, Louisiana, he raised his
own food. When John retired, he decided to keep busy by selling
the things he’d always made for his family: smoked sausage,
tasso, cracklins, and boudin. John is of the old school: he doesn’t
believe that boudin is boudin unless it’s made the traditional
way, using more than just liver and rice. To make it properly, he
says, “You’ve got to put the right things in it.”
And all of those things—hog jaw, belly, heart, kidney, liver—get
stuffed into the casings at Saucier’s Sausage Kitchen. Locals
look to John for old-style Cajun specialties. For him, the tradition
is as important as the taste.
 Listen
to this 3-minute audio clip
of John Saucier talking about growing up in rural Louisiana and
his memories of traditional boucheries or hog killings. [Windows
Media Player required. Go here
to download the player for free.]
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: John Saucier
Date: October 10, 2006
Location: Saucier’s Sausage Kitchen – Mamou, LA
Interviewer: Amy Evans
---
Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans for the Southern
Foodways Alliance on Tuesday, October 10th 2006, and I’m at
Saucier’s Sausage Kitchen and Grocery, which is in a little
community between Eunice and Mamou Louisiana—.
John Saucier: Called Lesmeg.
Lesmeg. And Mr. Saucier could you say your name and your birth
date if you don’t mind for the record, please?
Okay, my name is John Saucier. My birthday is June 26th; I’m
65 years old. I’ve been in the community of Lesmeg for the
last twenty years, and so I decided to open a little store down
here. I serve sausage and tasso and boudin, crackers,  and
all that good stuff, and I sell for people all over. And then I
got signs—just follow the signs and come down here. And I’m
open seven days a week. I go to church Sunday morning a while, an
hour in the morning to church, and then we come back and open again,
and we’re doing really good back here. And me and my wife
[Betty Saucier] and my boy [Nick Saucier]—we all work together,
a little co—family thing. And we do a lot of sausage in the
winter for the—people from all over Texas and Beaumont [Texas]
and their children all over, they come here and they bring a bunch
of deer. And like I got one yesterday from—from Porte Barre
[Louisiana], they brought me a deer. I cut it, and he come pick
it up last night about six o’clock…And we smoke most
every day, like next—tomorrow we’ll smoke pork and tasso
[smoked pork] and pounce [stuffed pork stomach] and the deer—the
deer for people—the customers. And it’s going really
good, and we’ll—we’ll come back—we won't
become rich in the country here but we pay our bills and it’s
really—really—we have a really good time with that.
So where were you and what were you doing before you came here?
I was working for the Sheriff’s Department—Evangeline
Parish Sheriff’s Department. I retired there and then I went
to school—Mamou high school. I worked there for 18 years;
I retired that six months ago. And then I’m here with my wife
regularly. Before that I would just help her part-time, you know,
before I’d go to school and early in the morning and at night
and the weekend. And now I’m here—we’re here regularly
with her and it’s going a lot better you know.
---
Okay, so you just had a customer. Is she a regular customer?
No, ma’am—the first time she come here. She’s
from Eunice. She ate some sausage at one of her friend’s last
week and really liked them so she come find the place and she’s
going to get a box of sausage.
And you all were speaking that Cajun French to each other.
Yes, ma’am. She talk French and I talk French. Yeah, we was
talking French, me and her. And she said, “I can't eat too
much of smoked but,” she said, “I really like it.”
But she said, “I come by to get me a box, and I’m going
to eat a bit at a time—and give a little bit to my kids and
we’ll come—start buying with you because I heard that
you’re really good.” I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
And she’s a really nice lady. The first time I see her. But
she said she will be back. [Laughs]….She said she will be
back because it’s supposed to turn very cold at the end of
the week, so she will be back to get some more stuff—sausage
and stuff and her and her kids—so she said that I’m
sure they going to like it. I said, “Yeah, everybody likes
it—says how they like it.” And it’s good. It’s
smoked like the old the time with pecan and red oak and smoke—there’s
not nothing else except salt and pepper in my meat and it’s
all fresh meat, so it got to be good.
---
And where do you get your pork from?
I get it through a meat company from Opelousas [Louisiana], and
I get all my meat from there and my pork bellies and my pigs and
the Boston butt and everything else—pork skins. I get a lot
of meat through Eunice Superette, too. I go up there to the store.
---
Were you born in this area?
No, ma’am; I was born in Plaisance—St. Landry Parish.
I’ve been in Mamou area about 40 years now and I really—I
like it down here—very nice people and very—and in Evangeline
Parish. I was raised in St. Landry Parish. But I’m down here;
it’s 40 years now.
May I ask about your parents?
My parents—my parents, he farmed all his life. I was with
him ‘til I got married. We [were] still in Plaisance. We plant
cotton and potato and corn and plant peanuts and plant some—about
an acre of field some beans just to eat and okra and watermelon
 and
tomatoes and all that good stuff. We make all our own—grow
all our own stuff. And one of us, when it’s time to pick-up,
we just pick it up, and we clean it up and put it in the deep freeze
and we scald it and clean it and put it in the deep freeze like
the—the tomatoes and then we pick it up. And my mama has like
a little canning. She put it on the stove and she put in some jars
and she cans that and put it in the—our extra bedroom for
us to eat in the winter. And we raise all our hogs. We had a cow;
we had a—we milk the cow twice a day. I helped my daddy. And
we had a bunch of hogs; when we need some meat we just grab a big—a
fat one, there, shoot the one we want, and we clean it ourselves
and make our meats, our own grease and everything. And we had our
own cows and we butchered a calf like every six months because it
was like five or six kids all in the family together. So we did
all our own stuff ourselves; we hardly didn’t buy nothing;
we raised all of our stuff. That’s years ago.
What were your parents’ names?
My daddy’s name was Johnny Saucier and my mama’s name
is Lomie. Lomie Saucier.
So you’ve done this sort of thing all your life, more or
less?
That’s it. I work all my life since I was young. My daddy,
when he was 39 years old, he had a heart attack and I didn’t
go back to school. I didn’t finish my school; I just went
to the fourth grade, so I had to take over. I had four sisters,
so I had to take over, and I was the only boy. I had to—a
lot of time we were plowing mules and horses in the field, so—and
all by hand. We didn’t have no tractor or nothing and so I
couldn’t go to school too much. And my daddy, he had got that
heart attack, so he couldn’t work hard at all, just a little
bit and he started to get worse and worse and he died—he was
56 years old when he had the other heart attack—passed away.
So I was the man of the house since I was about twelve, thirteen
years old, working real hard in the fields and everything else—milk
cows and feed animals and all—all that stuff. But the kids
now—if I tell them that they think I’m lying to them,
I guess, because they got it made now. They’ve got computers
and everything else; I didn’t have none of that. I had nothing.
I didn’t have no car, didn’t have even a bicycle. I
had friends—we were out there riding horseback—not even
a saddle even. Ride horseback and we invited friends and we’d
play games and marbles and top in front of the house and that’s—that’s
the way it was back in our time. Yes, ma’am; that’s
it.
So was there anyone when you were growing up, you know families
fended for themselves and had gardens and raised their own livestock.
Was anyone selling sausage or boudin or anything when you were growing
up?
No, ma’am. Well nobody would sell that because we do all—our
own stuff. We had our own smokehouse at the house. We’d kill
our hogs, and we’d kill like eight or ten hogs every—just
day b—just before Christmas—killed a bunch of hogs,
a big hog. We’d butcher eight or ten of them. We’d make
all our meat, we make our hog—the hog—them hogs and
we would make our boudin and make our cracklin’s and make
our sausage and make tasso; we would make our chevaliers [omelets]
and we would make grillades [pan-fried round steaks] [Laughs] We’d
make all kind of stuff and pounce [stuffed pig stomach] and smoke
all that and we had to  smoke
to them ‘til they were just about cooked because we didn’t
have no icebox, so we had to smoke that to almost cooked. And there’s
big old clay jars. I had one for the grease and one for the sausage
and one for the—all the rest of the stuff, tasso, bacon—all
that. We had eight or ten jars—big old clay jars—big
jars; each had the stuff in them. My mom would put some white rag
on there and she tied that and when she wanted to cook she’d
just go down with her fork and the spoon and get a little bit of
grease and get—what you wanted—bacon, sausage, tasso,
as well as—it was all just about cooked; we smoked it to about
cooked because just keeping that grease in the—the cool room.
Because in that time it was really cold and not like it is now.
In the winter-time man we had icicles around the house just for
months and we had an inch or two of—sometimes a foot of snow
around the house, so it was really cold, so that’s when we
do our stuff, and we didn’t have icebox.
Do you remember the first time you butchered a hog yourself?
Well it was a while back now. I was about thirteen, fourteen years
old. My daddy shot—made me shoot at the first hog and I bled
it myself. He showed me how to bleed it and how to really [got]
a kick out of that and I had to clean it and we scalded the water—we
scalded the water outside and boiled the water outside and we scalded
the hog in the—in the pot—tub and we put it on the table
and we scratched, we cut it and cut it up by pieces and ready to
eat. And that’s the way we do it. Didn’t have no icebox.
Did you have a favorite part of that process that you looked
forward to, like were cracklin’s your favorite or anything
like that?
Well the cracklin’s was number one, but backbone—that
was the best of all the rest and the ribs—cooked the ribs
and had an old woodstove. My mama would cook the ribs in there with
the skin so it would crack and it was really good. And she cooked
the backbone on the stove—the woodstove and that was really
delicious. That was—that was our best food to eat after we
butchered that hog. Yeah. [Laughs]
Were there every community hog killings or things when people
in the area would get together like before Mardis Gras or anything
like that?
No, not in my territory. Everybody had their little thing we’d
do—and the kids and the family. My old grandpa—I lost
my grandma; she was young and my grandpa showed us and so we all
do all the things ourselves. My daddy worked—did ours—some
neighbor or somebody would just come and give us some meat that
would help. But we didn’t have much people coming; each—each
would do their thing because in that time they had no—no—no
fence; everything was loose and the winter time the hogs was everywhere,
the cows in the road and everything is loose. So when it comes to—so
farming and planting potatoes and all that, everybody had to go
and get all the hogs—the different hogs or the cows and everybody
had to stop planting their stuff. Had to pin them up because we
was going to plant the potatoes and make the potatoes—to plant
and plant our potatoes and all that good stuff; you still plant
the corn and all that so everybody had to pin up their hogs and
the cows and get them out of the road and scattered everywhere.
Sometimes the hogs, they—they were—we would ride on
our wagons to try to find them, and sometimes it was four or five
miles way down the other neighborhood—way over there where
we’d have to go in the wagon and pick up a bunch of hogs that
were—they were small and at that time when they started the
pin to build—the hogs were 200 or 300-pound hogs because they
go to—why they eat that corn or potato—all they want.
So there was—we had a lot of meat just raised wild—it
wasn’t wild hog but we didn’t have to feed him because
he was just loose, you know. They go everywhere and eat good stuff
and when it was ready to pin it up we’d go pick up a bunch
of hogs and make a bunch of meat for us to eat. That was our living
at that time.
Do you think that hogs taste different now?
Well yes, ma’am. The stuff is not like it used to be because
in my time it was, like I said, they had straight corn and like
I said, it was raised loose and they would just pick it up and bring
him back and we would butcher him, you know, and the meat was—the
meat was a lot better than it is now. That’s all I can tell
you. I guess all that good stuff they eat—corn, potatoes in
the field and everything else, you know. When it comes to butcher
it was like—plus it was fresh; that’s the number one
thing. Now you go buy some stuff to the store—that meat has
been frozen and I don’t know how many times. Anyway, and it’s
still good, but it’s not like my time. My time was the real
thing. It was fresh. Yeah.
So here today we’re sitting on your porch here and there’s
chickens in the yard and a beautiful garden back there and a smokehouse
in front of me here. Have you always done these things even when
you were working in town?
Well yes, ma’am. All the time I raise my own stuff. All the
time a bunch of chicken and ducks and pigeons. And I used to raise
my own hogs, too, here but I started working for the Sheriff and
the school I didn’t have much time to fool with all that and
the fee was so high, so I stopped raising my own hogs. When I want
some meat now I go to the stockyard and buy me some hogs and bring
it to the storehouse in Mamou or Eunice. It’s better for me,
unless I want a little hog, first—butcher with my wife and
my kids here, like we do once a year. Once a year we’ve got
a big boucherie here. My son-in-law him, he did once a year—he
go to the stockyard, and we buy two or three good hogs about 300
or 400 pounds a piece and bring them here and butcher them and make
a big boucherie every year for the kids, you know—for the
grandkids and the kids, and we have a ball. And we cook the cracklin’s
outside on the wood outside in the pots. And cook the backbone outside
and they good crackin’s and the backbone outside—and
we’ll clean the guts and we make some—a [French phrase]—I
don’t know how you call that in English. I can't say it. It’s
the inside of the hog. We take the big guts, we clean out the big
and the small and we’ll put the little guts and the big guts
and we smoke that and it’s really good in the gumbo; you put
it in the gumbo, and it’s really good. I don’t know
if you ever ate that, but it’s really good. And we’ll
do all our own stuff like that, you know, and bring the hog on the
table and cut it all by hand with a saw. And we make all our own
meat and the roasts and all that, and we separate it between us
and that’s the way we operate.
---
So your business here today, you said you’ve had this about
twenty years?
Well it’s twenty years I stay here; but my store it’s
only ten years we’re open. Yeah it’s about ten years
we’re here.
And what made you want to open a store?
Well because all my life, as I told you while ago, [Laughs] I played
with animals and I really did like to do that, you know. Ad my daddy
too, when I was younger we would make our own stuff, you know. So
when I retired I said well I’m going buy me a little building,
and I’m going to make me this store and sell to the public—to
the people a little bit of everything so that was the start.
Have you enjoyed having a store?
Oh, yes, ma’am; I really do enjoy it. We it’s not all
that busy now days but it’s going to get there like next month
and on, it will be really busy. We’ll be hot—when it’s
hot, the summer is not—the sausages don’t move to fast
because it’s so hot, you know. People don’t eat it.
But from now on we’re going to be busy, oh, yeah.
And so you make a lot of stuff. You have tasso, bacon, sausages,
beef jerky, cracklings, boudin. And do you make it in the same way
that your father made things growing up?
Yes, ma’am. There’s probably I’m doing the same
thing because he showed me since I was about twelve or thirteen
years old. I started messing with all and everything else, so I
kept almost the same recipe you know. Like some guy came a while
back and he begged me to buy my recipe. I said, “Not for sale.”
I said, “My daddy give me that forty years ago.” I said,
“I won't sell it.” He said, “I’ll give you
a lot of money.” I said, “Well I’m sorry. I’m
a poor man.” I said, “My daddy give it to me, and the
only one that is going to have it is one of my boys—my kids.
Nobody else—not for sale.”
---
Tell me about your boudin.
Okay, the boudin well, we make that like once a week—just
made a bunch last week, last Friday. Today’s Tuesday, yeah.
Okay; well the boudin we’ve got to use the hog jaw—of
the hog, the belly, the meat and the liver and the heart, the kidney—we
put all that in there, all the good stuff and you grind all that
and you get—put the rice with that and the green parsley,
green onions, and the head of onions, and we put all that in that
boudin and we stir all that. That’s the only way we make our
boudin. Yeah.
Could you describe your boudin like the consistency of it and
the spice in it?
Well we—some people don’t like it too hot. They like
some people’s older here, they just want some salt—no
pepper—nothing, because they—I guess they’re sick
and they can't have nothing else. So we make some order specials
that way—some without no pepper at all, just salt you know.
It’s just kind of like sausage; the sausage, the tasso—some
people just want it with salt—no pepper, no nothing. And we
mostly do it—we specialize with that but some people want
it you know more hot and some want as much. We do it—orders
as they ask, you know. But most of the time it’s salt and
pepper and some people and then sometimes they want black pepper
in it. Some people say will you put—what you want, you know.
We’ve got a stove, you know we got—.
So if someone wanted some extra spicy boudin they could call
ahead and ask for that?
Yes, ma’am. If they want it real hot I can make it hot. I
got—that cayenne pepper, I guarantee you it’s going
to be hot if they want it hot, oh yeah. [Laughs]
Is the spice in things like boudin is something that has kind
of changed over the years, do you think?
Well it got more popular last few years, yeah, than it was, you
know. It was a time—all the time kind of popular but it’s
more than ever now. Especially the wintertime, you know from this
point on, start moving it a lot more; yeah because it’s going
to be cold and they want that hot boudin, you know. And yeah, it’s
going to move a lot more.
---
Well I wonder, like the woman who came by earlier to get the
sausage, she seemed of your generation. I wonder if there are some
folks of your generation in the area that like your product because
you do it the old way.
Oh yes, ma’am. They got some people in there that don’t
like it that—that way because they like it like the—the
other way of years ago and they don’t like it that—the
old way, some young generational people you know they—the
real young ones, some don’t like it the way we do it because
they don’t like all that smoke and all that and they said—they
just don’t like that when it’s cooking. Well me, I smoke
it but I don’t smoke it all that much, but I smoke it like
the old-time stuff. And we got some people that—that don’t
care too much about that old-time way that we do it now. They like
it like the new kind of way that people do it in Lafayette and other
places. It’s not smoked liked my stuff. It’s all made
like a—they put the smoke some way and they got some kind
of blower and they blow it, and it’s very light smoke in there.
Sausage don’t taste right because it’s not like I do
it. I do like the old-time and smoke like the old time. It make
a big difference.
Do you smoke your boudin sometimes also?
Well the only way I smoke boudin is if somebody orders boudin. Because
there’s some spoil real easy—boudin. It is not nothing
to play with; the only way I do that is they order that—I
smoke—just what they want because myself to sell it in the
store, I tried that—it don’t move too fast, smoked boudin.
A little bit but they like—they like it the regular way. They
don’t like it too much smoked.
So what, in your opinion, makes a good boudin?
Well you got to put the right thing in it. You got to put the fresh
hog. You don’t put no old meat in there like some people do—.
I’m not cutting down nobody, but some places they tell me
boudin is not good—don’t taste good because they put
all kinds of meat in there and it’s got some old meat that’s
going to get old and dark and all that. Me, I don’t do stuff
like that. I go by my hog at the stockyards; I bring it to the slaughterhouse.
I have it butchered and I come here and it’s all fresh meat
and I cut it up and all my pieces, boil it in some pot on my burner
and everything is fresh and everything, so I stir that together
and that’s the way I make my boudin—nothing old—nothing.
It’s all—it’s really meat.
---
Can you talk about how what is your way of life and how you were
brought up and how now it’s a way to earn money? Can you talk
about that a little bit?
Well my time—all we had to do is, like I say, I farmed all
my life ‘til 30 years now I quit. I worked for the Sheriff
and the school and got the store now. Anyway, when I was young,
we grew up, we—we would do all our stuff in the field you
know and we’d have to sell the cotton, pick up cotton and
we’d sell it to—to the cotton gin by bales to make our
living and the sweet potato, we would dig it and the truck would
come like once a week and pick up a big load potatoes and they’d
pay us and the—the—all the rest of the stuff extra we’d
sell it—we had a bunch of extra stuff in the field. We would
sell the corn to the people would—some wanted some and we’d
sell like a bushel of corn or like a bushel of okra and make us
extra money to help  the
living, you know. And that—that’s the way we make our
living in the old time, you know. We didn’t have nothing like
now. You had to scrape for everything, and that is the way we had
to live.
---
And now your sign, I found you because of your sign that’s
out on—is it Highway 13 and it’s—you have to be
dedicated to make all those switches and turns to come back here.
Yes, ma’am [Laughs]. I had to put signs all over down here
and they’re kind of—put the sign—but they come
from all over. They see my sign and they come here.
---
Do you feel like what you do here is maintaining a tradition
of how you came up in this area?
Yes, ma’am. It’s like the old time thing. I just keep
doing it like I was raised on and—because I like to do that
and most of the people around here that’s—that’s
the way they was raised, you know, and—and they eat some good
stuff and sell some good stuff to the people you know. And have
some good stuff for them to buy.
Do you feel like some of that’s being lost or will eventually
be lost? That some of that tradition is fading away?
Well some places, yeah, because they—in Lafayette or that—it’s
not like us here. It’s not like the old-time stuff. They go
by a different routine and it’s not made like I’m doing
it. It’s steam, and it’s not smoked like I’m doing
it. It’s different stuff—not the same thing; it’s
not as good either. It’s all right but you can't beat the
old-time stuff. You can't beat it.
---
So how long do you think you’re going to be in this business?
As long as I can make it, you know, I can walk—God lets me
walk. I can turn my legs now but it’s—I still can do
what I’ve got to do so far. As long as he is going to let
me do what I can do, I’m going to do it. I could retire but
what I’m going to do—sit down and look at the road?
That’s going to finish with me. I got two gardens; I got one
right here and got another one in back of the house. I still build
my garden and I might still be doing that—pass my time with
that and I love it, you know, and I did it all my life, so I know
I can walk—now when I can't walk I’m going to have to
retire. I’m going to have to leave it alone.
---
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