Smoked Jalapeño Cheddar Sausage: A Texas BBQ Recipe from Chuds BBQ
As soon as our plane touched down in Austin, Texas, we made a beeline for Chuds BBQ, home of pitmaster and YouTube BBQ star Bradley Robinson. It was 92°F with 87% humidity—sweat beading, smoke hanging thick in the air—and the perfect day to dive into the deeply savory world of handmade Texas sausage.
This was our first visit to the legendary Chud Shop, where the vibe is laid- back, the brisket melts in your mouth, the pork butt shreds with a fork, and those aforementioned sausages audibly snap. It’s precisely the kind of place where the custom smokers are always fired up—and where BBQ dreams are made.
Brad’s climb to YouTube fame began in 2012, after he moved to Austin and tasted his first bite of authentic Texas-style barbecue. From cooking meat in his backyard on a vertical water smoker to leveling up with a Weber Kettle, he quickly caught the BBQ bug.
His passion led him to work at the now-closed Freedmen’s Bar, where he met Evan LeRoy, the pitmaster and chef known for his inventive cooking style. That partnership helped launch the iconic LeRoy & Lewis BBQ (yes, we visited—and the Michelin Star BBQ lived up to the hype).
Back at home, Brad kept pushing himself. When cheap offset smokers weren’t cutting it, he took matters into his own hands and built his first from a 150-gallon propane tank. That smoker is still in use today on the Chuds BBQ YouTube channel, which exploded in popularity during the pandemic and now boasts almost 500k subscribers.
With demand growing for handmade smokers and BBQ pits, Brad teamed up with Nick “Bones” Gambone to scale the business. Chuds BBQ now builds some of the most respected BBQ pits around—prized for their quality and longevity—supporting local Texas fabricators and staying true to the spirit of community.
And let’s talk Texas sausage. One of Brad’s specialties is house-made sausage, especially Jalapeño Cheddar sausage—a spicy, cheesy BBQ staple. Brad teaches sausage-making classes and walked us through his step-by-step process. If you’re serious about BBQ and love smoked sausage, you’ve got to see how this comes together.
Watch the full video to learn how we made authentic Texas Jalapeño Cheddar sausage from scratch, with RFX™ Wireless tracking every step of the cooking process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynp-CcHhvdo
Chud’s Jalapeño-Cheddar Hot Link Sausage
Ingredients
- Meat/Fat: 80/20 – 70/30
- 5-10 % Jalapeños, cut in half
- 1.5-2 % Salt
- 0.25 % Pink Curing Salt #1
- 2-4 % Binder Milk Powder
- 0.5 % Primary Seasonings
- 0.25 % Secondary Seasonings
- 0.125 % Tertiary Seasonings
- 10 % Liquid
- 10-20 % Cheese (high-temp preferred)
Instructions
- Chill your grinder parts in the freezer. Also cube and chill your meat in the freezer for about a half hour.
- Run the meat and the jalapeños through a coarse plate on your meat grinder.
- Add the salt, curing salt, binder, and seasonings and mix to distribute the dry among the meat. Add the liquid and cheese and mix to combine thouroughly—until the meat clings to your hand enough to hold it upside-down without falling off.
- Stuff into your casings of choice.
- Preheat your smoker to 150°F.
- Insert RFX MEAT into your sausage, and smoke up to 150–160°F. Increase the smoker temp to 250°F and keep cooking.
- Remove the sausages from the smoker and shock them in an ice bath for about 10 minutes, trying to get below 75°F. Move them to the refrigerator and cool completely before wrapping for storage
- If cooking any immediately, put them back on the smoker and cook to an internal temperature of 160°F.
- Let the sausages cool slightly before enjoying!
Notes
- 2.5 lb lean brisket
- 2.5 lb pork belly
- 4 oz jalapeños
- 1.6 oz salt
- 3 tsp pink curing salt (Prague #1)
- 1 Tbsp black pepper, ground
- 1 Tbsp paprika
- 1 Tbsp granulated garlic
- 1 Tbsp ground mustard
- 3.2 oz milk powder
- 8 oz water
- 12 oz high-temp cheddar
Would have loved to try it if there were any actual recipe there hahaha. Totally blocking this site.
I’m sorry the percentages don’t do it for you…we left them that way so that anyone could scale the recipe to their desired batch and flavor more easily. But here are the ratios from the video:
2.5 lb lean brisket
2.5 lb pork belly
4 oz jalapeños
1.6 oz salt
3 tsp pink curing salt (Prague #1)
1 Tbsp black pepper, ground
1 Tbsp paprika
1 Tbsp granulated garlic
1 Tbsp ground mustard
3.2 oz milk powder
8 oz water
12 oz high-temp cheddar
I hope that clears things up!