5 Things- Summer Madness!

Summer officially begins on June 21st, but here at the Smokehaus, it effectively starts Memorial Day Weekend. As the weather warms up, tourists and locals alike naturally gravitate towards Lake Superior, Canal Park and Park Point (along with all of the other incredibly beautiful outdoor spaces in Duluth) to soak up that precious surf and sun. Memorial day weekend is usually when we start to notice that the lines extend a little further down the hallway at our lunch rush, the summertime SECONDARY lunch rush starts in earnest, and that we have a generally hard time getting in and out of our beloved workplace. Right about now you’ll start to notice that our 5 Things blogs will get away from talking about plans, product development and visioning our business, and will probably shift more towards the nuts and bolts of what we will do in earnest for the next 4 months; sling sandwiches. We have a minute, though, to talk about some other stuff. Let’s get into it!

What’s ‘On Deck’? Great question! The answer is more creature comforts. We’ve had a really nice deck right outside our door for the entire time we’ve existed here at The Dewitt Seitz building, and through the years we’ve added more tables and chairs to accommodate our growing number of patrons. Since we don’t have a ton of space in our actual deli, the deck really becomes our dining room for a lot of people. We’ve had it in our minds for a while to put a some of our personality outside of our shop, and the deck offers the perfect canvas. Our amazing team here at The Smokehaus brought the vision to life by buying umbrellas, planters, flowers and furniture, along with creating custom decals to decorate some of the furniture. Our customers have absolutely loved the small but cozy touches that we’ve added, and we’ve even heard rave reviews from our staff. Having a beautiful outdoor space that matches what we do inside the building is just another small step along the way for us in crafting a customer experience that is both memorable and comfortable.

The Smokehaus just keeps popping up! The businesses that we partner with are extremely important to us. We are so incredibly lucky to have a business partner right here in Canal Park that we not only respect as a business, but is also comprised of our good friends. Our old pal Dave Hoops has a pretty great (and important in the world of Duluth beer) brewery just about a block away from our Deli. Hoops Brewing also loves great partnerships, which is why they are allowing Northern Waters Smokehaus to curate a pop up restaurant in their taproom on the first Friday of each and every month. We love to draw inspiration for these pop ups from the incredible beers brewed at Hoops, and we’ve done everything from ribs and kimchi to Bison Buddies snack sticks to good old fashioned bratwurst and polish sausage. One thing that we haven’t done much (until the last couple Fridays) was tacos… which seems crazy, right? Our homie TK brought the prerequisite bratwursts and accoutrements to the party, along with our famous Smokehaus Carne Adovada tacos. Lo and behold, the tacos were were a huge hit and the first thing to sell out ( pairing brilliantly with Hoops’ Keller Pils ). Catch us each and every month at Hoops for more exciting snacks and, probably, tacos. Speaking of…

Taco Tuesday is maaaaaybe just a little played out. As a concept! Not as a way of life, obviously. But, we recognize that many many places do a riff on Taco Tuesday (including us) and that many of them ripped the concept off from a rather large taco corporation with an inexplicably Anglo-Saxon name purported as their leader (including us). But that doesn’t mean that Taco Tuesday can’t be special, and here at The Smokehaus we do our utmost to make it the best of the best. The aforementioned Carne Adovada tacos from the Hoops popup have always been a staple of our Tuesday special, but we’ve recently really expanded our taco horizons even further. This past Tuesday brought Gringo Tacos. More John than Juan, the Gringo Taco is just like Mom used to make: ground beef (except we grind the beef ourselves), cheddar cheese, iceburg lettuce, tomatoes and salsa (house made). We know that most people get the crispy taco shells that you toast in the oven, but we weren’t prepared to go quite that far in the name of kitsch, so we decided to offer house-made corn tortillas and soft flour tortillas. Other awesome and even fusion-like flavors of tacos we’ve slung have included Green Curry (a nod to the cuisine of Indian food guru Madhur Jaffrey) and just a plain old (not at all plain OR old) pulled pork taco with simple accompaniments of onion, cilantro and salsa. Got a hankering for a Tuesday taco flavor? Hit us up! We’re trying to change the taco game each week, and we will take any help or suggestions that you have to offer. We feel as though there is always room for collaboration. And tacos. Always tacos.

So Fresh, So Clean- In the past few years, we’ve taken a lot of care in sprucing up and ramping up the functionality of our tiny deli and storefront. Think about it; we had the television show Diners, Drive Ins and Dives show up 8 long years ago, and ever since have been reacting to the astounding amount of business that it has brought our way. Our deli was definitely going through some growing pains trying to accommodate the droves of hungry food tourists beating down our door, but we did it. And we think that we did it pretty well. With all of the big changes that have happened, you often don’t have a moment to contemplate the significance of the small changes. This week, our property manager decided that we were next on the list for a refresh of paint, so we jumped at it! It’s still a work in progress, but we feel that the color scheme that we picked really goes a long way in making the space inviting and calming for not only patrons but our staff as well. Check out the beginnings here, and come see the final result in person. We think you’ll approve!

Scavenger Hunt- 2018 is the year that we celebrate 20 years of Northern Waters Smokehaus. Knowing what a milestone this is for any business, we decided that we should take the time leading up to our actual anniversary (September) to do some fun stuff for the community that we live in, which coincidentally is the community that supports us so beautifully. Maybe it’s not such a coincidence, but one thing is for certain; we wanted to let Duluth know how much it means to us. More is in the works in the next few months (I won’t get into it here), but we figured we’d start hyping what we think will be a really fun part of our summer- A Scavenger Hunt! In the month of July, we’ll be releasing clues via our social media outlets for a giveaway of 20 (see what we did?) Cajun Finn sandwiches. We chose the Finn because it is not only our most popular sandwich, but we feel our most iconic. Check us out on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for clues starting July 2nd and win some lunch! Why wouldn’t you?

Get here in the Summer! Also, get here in the rest of the year. Duluth is beautiful, and it makes us really happy to share it with the people who appreciate it. See you soon!

Turkey and Fennel Recipe

Ingredients:

1 whole Smoked Turkey Breast
2 Bulbs Fennel
1 Yellow Onion
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1.5 Cups Dry White Wine (such as Sauvignon Blanc)

Method:

• Preheat Oven at 325 degrees.

• If there is skin on the turkey, peel it off. You can shred and fry this in oil and sprinkle on a salad or discard – up to you.

• Dice veggies and sauté with oil in a large coated (or not coated) cast iron Dutch oven until fragrant and translucent. Add Turkey Breast and wine, cover, and put in the oven for 60minutes.

• Check the turkey at this point – it should have an internal temperature of at least 140 and should be tender to the touch. If so, uncover and roast at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

• Remove turkey to a cutting board. Let rest for 5 minutes and then carve or chunk and place back in the Dutch oven to soak up residual sauce and veggie flavors. Serve with fresh buttered pasta, crispy potatoes, or on crusty bread with fresh butter and/or provolone.

Tubesteak Boogie

Tubesteaks are fresh and in season! Wait… what the heck are tubesteaks??? Well, it’s what my grandfather called sausages for supper to make us think we were eating steak. Though Northern Waters Smokehaus is most known for our smoked fish and meats, we are always stocked full of haus-pumped and tied fresh sausages – and in my personal opinion, our fresh sausages are some of our best products. So, pull out the grill, invite friends over, and put the beverages on ice- It’s tubesteak time. Totally tubular, brah!

Hailing from a family of Germanic and Czech heritage, holidays were a bounty of glistening sausages, savory smoked meats, and sauerkraut. Here at the Smokehaus, our fearless leader Eric Goerdt has taken his own culinary traditions and pumped them into a mouthwatering spectrum of fresh sausage flavors. Sweet maple syrup, spicy jalapeños, savory italian notes, & sweet apples are just a few of  the amazing flavors that lend to the relishing quality of our sausages. Seriously, if you haven’t tried any of our handcrafted and flavorful fresh sausages, you need to come down to our deli and pick up a pack! Or, if you live out of town, check out our website and order ‘The Fresh Pack’; we’ll send any combination of our best-selling fresh sausages right to your door! Not sure what we have to offer? School is in session! All of the delicious fresh sausages described here are available for order online in The Fresh Pack, and of course, in our Canal Park deli.

Starting with my personal favorite, our Classic German Brat is a perfect harmony of flavors – we’re talking veal, Berkshire pork, whole milk, and spices that make you long for a heaping pile of sauerkraut and mustard. This sausage is what all other German-style brats strive to be, and the attention to detail that we spend on our products really shines through in this instant classic.

So, we all know that beer and sausages are undeniably perfect together. So in the spirit of friendship, we created a beer brat, coined The Big Friendly; made with fresh ground Berkshire pork, Smokehaus bacon, our secret spices, and that classically sweet Minnesota brew, Grain Belt Premium. The Big Friendly is the perfect tubular vessel for accoutrements such as (of course) mustard, pickled relish, sautéed onions (deglazed with beer, obviously), or dare I even utter the word… ketchup. To each their own, I guess.

One of our most versatile sausages, The Italian, will make you scream “MIA MADRE QUELLA SALSICCIA!”… or you can just say “Damn! That’s good.” This sausage features Berkshire pork, salt, pepper, cayenne, crushed pepper, garlic, dried parsley, coriander, fennel seed, & bay leaves. But what makes it so versatile? Well, with this sausage you could definitely keep steady and put it on a soft white brat bun, but why stop there when it’s plump with so many flavors? Do yourself a favor and buy a pack of Italian sub rolls and top it with spicy giardiniera. YUM. Feel like eating with a fork and a knife? Rough chop and cook these sausages with your favorite red sauce to serve over a delicious plate of noodles.

One great aspect of living in the Midwest is having 4 distinct seasons. Autumn in Minnesota brings apple season, thus inspiring us to capture that tart yet sweet flavor in our outstanding Apple Brat. Made with delicious dehydrated apples, organic apple cider, freshly ground Berkshire pork, salt, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, caraway, marjoram, pepper, and cinnamon, this sausage absolutely sings when topped with delicious sauerkraut. With a perfect balance of sweet and sour flavor, we recommend enjoying this seasonal taste year-round!

Now, when the the spice gods created the jalapeño, it was written that salty pork was destined to find the jalapeño. With that understanding here at the Smokehaus, we created a monster! Smokehaus bacon, freshly ground Berkshire pork, jalapeños, and spices are forced together (through a sausage stuffer of course) to create the one and only Jalapeño Bacon Brat. This brat is the perfect balance of salt, pork, and spice. When cooking, I prefer to cook these on the grill and let them get a little crispy. The crunchy & snappy casings compliment the spicy jalapeños and succulent salty pork.

While we still have jalapeños and salty pork on our minds, we are going to venture out of hog casings and into the world of uncased sausages to talk about a spicy fresh ground sausage with inspiration derived from the amazing culinary traditions of Mexico. Let me please introduce to you our Chorizo Fresco. Made with Berkshire pork cheeks, tongues, hearts, and other organs, red wine vinegar, salt, ground Mexican chilies and jalapeños. Our ground chorizo explodes in your mouth and mind with vibrant and savory flavors. This chorizo is sold both online and in our deli in one pound packages and we guarantee that it will take your tacos and burritos to that next serious level of delicious and savory complexity.Pro tip: we also wholesale our chorizo! Find it in the Classic Provisions catalog or call us to inquire.

Let’s take a serious minute to talk about breakfast. We’ve all been told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, yet we often skip breakfast or eat things like a simple banana. Is this because we simply don’t take breakfast seriously or don’t have time to cook a delicious breakfast? Maybe. But if this next product passes your lips, you will never want to make excuses to skip breakfast again. Please, allow me to introduce one of my very favorite Smokehaus products, THE MAPLE BREAKFAST SAUSAGE. Allow me to state that this breakfast sausage is the best breakfast sausage you or I will ever taste again. I’m f*****g serious. Made with Berkshire pork, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, sage, marjoram, cayenne, maple syrup, and honey, these little sausages with satisfy you beyond your wildest breakfast fantasies. Cook them up in a skillet with your basic breakfast, chop them up and add a bunch to your biscuits and gravy, incorporate them into a breakfast burrito or breakfast sandwich, or be the true glutton you really are and fry up and eat the whole pack (about 8 per pack or 1 lb’s worth) by yourself. You deserve it!

So there you have it! We hope that this Smokehaus fresh-sausage primer has given you something to think about when planning your next meal (or not even planning it and deciding on the fly). We will also leave you with a friendly reminder: these tasty tubular treats can also be enjoyed on the first Friday of the every month this summer at HOOPS Brewing here in Canal Park for our Summer Pop-Up Restaurant (call or look to our social media for specific times and details). And if you’re ever having a severe case of the Mondays, stop in to our Deli and try our Smoker’s Choice Sausage Special (Served 11am until they are gone), served on a Haus-made potato rosemary bun with all the necessary accoutrements provided. We look forward to seeing you!

Prost!  

5 Things- Word to your mom

It's been yet another crazy week here at the Smokehaus.

We’re a bit beside ourselves trying to figure out what the weather is going to do, and what our place within that ultimately is, but no matter what, the big Smokehaus wheel keeps turning and churning out great products. In this edition of 5 Things, we talk about what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and how we let everyone know.

Hippie Takeover!!! Ok, so there’s this thing where your company is so immersed in their own world and culture that they forget about the world at large, right? Well, we at The Smokehaus are no different. Our main focus since inception was to make quality products that no one else in our region, and very few in the United States, could match. Upon our start, we were really in a league of our own- largely because literally no one else was producing fine charcuterie and smoked fish to the high standard that we were. Our founder, Eric, has a real and palpable passion for food, and he is able to not only convey that to others, but find the people who have that same very real feeling to work beside him. So, love of food informs all that we do, and one thing we now know is that there are a lot of people out there who have this same love of food, but cannot or will not eat gluten or animal products. Which is why we have taken on the task of producing a delicious substitute for meat, so that anyone with any dietary needs can enjoy one of our signature sandwiches. We started off by trying to smoke both firm tofu and tempeh. We’re still learning! Our staff had mixed opinions, but we agreed that we were on to something! Everyone who works for us brings a wealth of food knowledge to the table, and so by our constant collaboration we feel as though we will eventually produce something that is really special. So, we will update you with our progress in the weeks to come, and until we nail it we will just keep trying these delicious experiments.

Word to ya Mother! We know that you love your Momma. We love our own Mommas as well, and have our own traditions in which we celebrate them each year. True to form, our owner Eric has a pretty unique food tradition with his Mom (with whom he credits kindling his love of all things culinary). Spring in Northern MN/WI/MI has always meant the annual running of the smelt. If you’re not familiar, smelt are a little sardine-like fish that are actually an invasive species to the Great Lakes, but one that those in the know really love. The tradition for fishing these little guys is to go to one of the many large tributary rivers of the Great Lakes and wade out near the mouth. There is a specialized net called a seine that kind of looks like a volleyball net which two people stretch out beneath the water. In a carefully orchestrated maneuver they will haul the net up on to shore, hopefully full of these little fish-stick fishes. The smelt are de-headed and gutted (usually with a pair of scissors and your thumb) and then lightly dredged in flour or battered and then deep-fried. The big smelt you can easily peel the backbone and little bones out and eat it like a fish stick (avoid the very end tail fin). The smaller smelt you can just crunch down bones and all (I kind of like the bones). They’re something that you can really only get fresh in parts of the Great Lakes region and definitely something that is not available in Iowa where Eric is from and where his Mother still lives. Eric’s Mom loves these little morsels, and every year Eric either cooks her some or ships them to her door. It’s such a cool and uniquely Northern thing to do that we have others considering this type of celebratory feast. The timing is perfect and the fish is surprisingly good, so why not give it a shot?

Beer And Food Are Great Partners! So, we know that craft beer has been absolutely exploding in our home state of Minnesota in the last 5 years (Not literally. Overcarbonated?), and we feel like one of the champions and great contributors to that would be The Growler Magazine. If you haven’t seen copies of this mag lying around your finer liquor stores it could mean that they have all been swooped up by those in the know who want to be even more in the know about the world of beer and it’s culture. The Growler has great contributing artists and writers who all share the common goal of educating and celebrating Minnesota (and beyond) beer, along with anything (food, culture, lifestyle) that goes with it. Luckily, The Growler has given our business great ink over the years, and it is readily apparent that the folks that work there truly love our food. In the spirit of that, The Growler came to our Canal Park offices to talk to our owner Eric and our General Manager Mary. Everyone sat down with some sandwiches and had a great lunchtime discussion about the history of The Smokehaus from inception to the present-day, with heavy emphasis on the thing at the heart of our success- our culture. The mutual admiration of our two entities was apparent, and our bond has been irrevocably established. We hope to collaborate in the future, at least on eating great food and drinking great beer, but who knows? The sky is the limit with two businesses that feel such great passion for what they do.

Save your bottles in the 218! Since our business is directly dependent on the pristine waters of Lake Superior, we consider ourselves stewards of the environment maybe more than others normally would. We also are a business comprised of people who love the outdoors and love all of the satisfaction and serenity that our favorite body of water provides us. We try to make small and large decisions that impact how we interact with the environment around us, and we always try to make as little of a footprint as possible. To that end, we decided to splurge and get a bottle filling station in our deli. Any one of our customers and really anyone in the building can fill up for free in a reusable container, thus saving on plastic water bottles. The station even counts how many bottles you have saved! One of our deli superstars Ned snapped this most opportune photo in celebration of not only what we’re saving on plastic, but also the area code in which we reside. It’s the little things that you do every day that make a difference, and we are ever on the hunt for that next little thing that we can do to preserve not only our pristine environment, but the lifestyle that we live within it.

Smokehaus Walk With Me. Our creative team has been on their grind lately! We have started to realize that our reach as a business is getting further and further, and that we need to respond and evolve along with the needs of our customers and in turn our own needs. Our first foray into a filmed commercial came at the hands of Jacob, a rising superstar in our Creative Department. You may notice that this commercial pays homage to one of those cult-classic weirdo television shows that is loved by only a few, but with a rabid devotion. This commercial is currently running at the local art house movie theater Zinema 2, and on our YouTube channel. We absolutely love it, and we think that you will too.