St. Louis Day Fun Facts

A Cooking Tradition—the St. Louis Day Meal

Long before 10 a.m. on St. Louis Day, things are buzzing on the Koenig Park grounds. The highlight of every celebration is the serving of the giant barbecue dinner — beef brisket, Alsatian-style sausage, potato salad, beans, fresh bread and iced tea.

Fresh sausage
Around two tons of famous Alsatian sausage is seasoned and stuffed in the cool early hours on Saturday morning, when most of the experienced sausage makers of the area give of their talents using a century old sausage recipe. The sausage is stored in a spacious walk-in cooler in the kitchen until Sunday morning when it is cooked and served.

Smoked beef brisket
After the huge metal barbecue pits have been fed an adequate supply of mesquite coals, a virtual mountain of prime boneless beef is placed in the pits and cooked to perfection by some 50 volunteers.

Picnic side dishes
Tons of potato salad, coleslaw, huge vats of pinto beans, thousands of slices of Alsatian bread and homemade cake, and a sea of iced tea and coffee, round out the menu that more than 500 volunteer workers will dish out at a pace of around 2,000 hungry diners per hour.

Quick meal lines, cool seating
Two efficient serving areas are used to avoid long meal lines. Diners may feast under the roof of the large dining pavilion or they may avail themselves of heaping plates to go, and eat their meals picnic style, beneath ancient pecan trees that have shaded picnickers for over a century.

Picture: Michael Beck, Lynn Boehme, Johnny Zinsmeyer,
Ray Wurzbach, Royce Groff, Zeke Moczygemba, Carlton Groff,
Terry Groff, Geoffrey Groff & Michael Groff

St. Louis Day Bean Cooks make their bean recipe in huge quantities. They cook 8 vats of these beans each St. Louis Day Celebration.

St. Louis Day Bean Recipe
1 kettle
75 lbs. Colorado Beans
35 lbs. bacon, cubed to 1/2”
10 lbs. onions, diced
6 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 lb. chili powder
16 cans diced tomatoes with chili peppers
Salt and pepper to taste

Wash and clean beans; put in kettle and fill water 4 inches over top of beans. Heat to boiling and add all remaining ingredients. Cook slow until the bubbles that come up have a bubble inside. Turn off heat and let set to thicken.

St. Louis Day Beef Brisket Recipe
3,800 lbs. beef brisket
15 lbs. salt
9 lbs. pepper
4 lbs. garlic powder

Basting sauce
40 gal. vinegar
20 lbs. finely chopped onions
10 lbs. lemons, squeezed for juice
1 gal. mustard
5 gal. cooking oil

Mix salt, pepper and garlic powder and sprinkle on both sides of brisket. Cook over hot mesquite coals for hours and hours and hours. Mix basting sauce ingredients and boil in large pot for 10 minutes. Baste meat throughout cook time.

Pictured: Charles Haby, Leon Haegelin, Gilbert Haby, Sammy Tschirhart, Sr., Wilburn Schott

Pictured above: Jerry Hoog, Paul Tondre, Sammy Tschirhart Sr.,
Charles Haby, Ralph Hoog, George Schmidt, Pat Tondre & Raymond Hoog

Pictured: Nathan Lutz and Troy Haby cooking
St. Louis Day BBQ sauce.

Many years ago, a local sauce contest yielded the original recipe for the St. Louis Day Sauce meal. Over time, it’s been perfected. Residents brag that it’s, “Number one” in Castroville and the surrounding area.