Family continues sausage tradition at St. Joseph meat market

ST. JOSEPH, Minn. (AP) - There’s a box of more than 70 recipe cards in the spice room at the St. Joseph Meat Market.

They’re handwritten for 50-pound quantities.

“Dad’s recipes were all in his head,” said head sausage maker Cy Pfannenstein, son of longtime owner Al “Junior” Pfannenstein.

Junior died in 2008. But his legacy continues, and five generations of Pfannensteins have worked at the market, including the current owner Harvey, Cy’s brother.

Junior bought the St. Joseph Meat Market in June 1968 after serving as head butcher at the location for about 20 years. Junior’s father was Al Sr., who spent about 40 years as the butcher and head sausage maker at the College of St. Benedict before helping trim meat at the St. Joseph Meat Market.

“My mother protested when they were going to name me Al the third,” jokes Cy, a 47-year butcher at the 26 First Ave. NW market. He worked alongside his father for 29 years until Junior retired in 1997.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people who worked with their dads, and it’s a common consensus that it’s a privilege.”

The family trademark has been the homemade sausages, which have won multiple awards including the top national honor in 2007 from the American Association of Meat Processors for maple syrup sausage links.

“We’re literally running out of space for all the different varieties,” retail store manager Pat Bennett told the St. Cloud Times (https://on.sctimes.com/1BSM8aj ).

The St. Joseph Meat Market expanded space for its sausage production three years ago, moving out of a cramped spot in the market’s processing plant to a new addition onto the store.

They’ve transitioned to an environment-controlled smokehouse that’s operated by a computer and can smoke about 400 pounds of sausage in four hours.

“I pinch myself coming to work every day,” Cy said. “I can’t believe I’m working here now.”

Recently the market made 6,000 pounds of sausage over a 14-hour span, a time that Cy said would’ve only produced about 300 pounds when he started working.

Cy said a typical 14-hour sausage-making span yields about 3,000-4,000 pounds, except during deer season when 5,000-pound days are common. The market also contracts with the Butcher & The Boar restaurant in Minneapolis, making its exclusive recipes that are also sold as retail.

The recipes at St. Joseph Meat Market contain a variety of ingredients including cheeses, fruits and vegetables. Some of their more adventurous flavors include Philly cheesesteak, tomato basil, sloppy joe and tater tot hotdish.

They also make Johnnie and Blazer brats to celebrate St. John’s University and College of St. Benedict.

Cy makes test batches to determine the best-tasting quantities of ingredients.

“If someone has an idea, they’ll usually try it,” Bennett said.

One suggestion became one of the market’s trademark brats - the funeral hotdish flavor. It came at the request of Cliff Mitchell, a KASM radio host of 56 years who retired in 2008.

“He came back from the State Fair one year and said they were putting hotdish on a stick,” said Cy, who hosts a Sunday morning polka show on the Albany station.

“He said ’You need to put that on a brat and call it funeral hotdish.’ Because when people die in Stearns County they always want to make sure the people who attend their funeral are fed, and almost every parish here serves hotdish.”

Cy has assembled that recipe and the others he learned from his father in the spice room box.

It ensures the Pfannenstein legacy at the St. Joseph Meat Market will continue for years to come.

“The traditions have been handed down to us,” Cy said. “It’s been a good occupation. I don’t think it’s the highest-paying trade I could’ve gone into but it’s a less stressful one.

“I’ve enjoyed my career and I believe that if you enjoy what you do, it’s not work.”

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Information from: St. Cloud Times, https://www.sctimes.com