For more than 80 years, New Braunfels Smokehouse has been part of the fabric of the city, growing from an ice plant into a family business known across the country for hickory-smoked meats.
The story began in 1943, when Kemble “Kim” Dunbar purchased the New Braunfels Ice Company. At the time, the ice plant provided cold storage for local farmers and ranchers, and behind the building, local workers were smoking hams, turkeys and sausage.
“My grandmother got to know the guys smoking meats in a shed-type building behind the plant, and they came up with the idea to start a business together. That’s how this all got started.” Hale recalls.
Those early smoke masters even brought family recipes into the business. Many of those recipes are still part of the Smokehouse today.
“Most of our seasonings, especially sausage, everything is pretty much exactly how it was in 1945,” Hale says.
The process has remained remarkably hands-on, too. Josh explains that most of the sausages are still made with individual ingredients measured by hand rather than relying on pre-blended seasonings. Hams, turkeys and briskets are hand-rubbed, too.
“There is no machine doing this stuff,” Hale says. “Even when it comes to the other products, say hams and turkeys and briskets, everything's hand rubbed.”
That attention to tradition extends to the smoke itself. While the Smokehouse experimented with woods such as mesquite, pecan and various oaks in its early years, hickory became the standard because of its consistency.
“If we're sending it to New York or sending it to California, or we're eating it here in Texas, it's an accepted, appreciated taste, the hickory,” Hale says.
Today, that tradition lives on in a wide range of products, from smoked hams and turkeys to brisket, ribs, tenderloins, sausage and jerky that the smokehouse ships direct-to-consumer throughout the United States. For Josh, jerky is one of the clearest examples of just how much work goes into the food.
“It’s very labor-intensive because you have to handle each small piece by hand,” he says. For easy math, with every 10 pounds of raw meat, you will only yield about three pounds of jerky after the smoking process. Losing 2/3rds of its original weight is the biggest reason why jerky is expensive.
For holiday tables, the Smokehouse points to its Hickory Smoked Spiral Sliced Ham and Texas Brisket as two of its biggest sellers. Locals, however, tend to have their own favorites.
“Sausages here,” Hale says. The downtown retail store allows customers to purchase individual varieties that are not available in the same way through the traditional catalog.
Then there is Wurstfest, where the Smokehouse has been part of the celebration since its beginning in the 1960s. The company was the only business to participate in the first Wurstfest and has returned every year since.
Today, the Smokehouse serves from one of the festival’s largest booths, with a menu built specifically for the event. Its signature Wurstkabob features five sausages, moving from the traditional pork and beef sausage to cheddar sausage, to bratwurst, to jalapeño wurst, and finally ending with a sweet apple wurst.
And no visit is complete without bread pudding.
“We are very well known for our bread pudding,” Josh says. “At the end of the night, there are people lined up to get the bread pudding.”
Made at the Smokehouse and baked fresh at Wurstfest, it is served with a vanilla butter sauce.
If you want to share a taste of New Braunfels with a family member, friend, or your business clients, that’s what they do, and do it well. From its 1940s ice plant beginnings to its Wurstfest tradition, New Braunfels Smokehouse has kept the focus where it started: good food, familiar recipes and plenty of people who take pride in making food with love.
“It’s made with lots of love. It really is.” - Josh