Slow-Cooked Smokies

Christmas week. Started the ham Wednesday — scored the skin in diamonds, packed the cuts with brown sugar and yellow mustard and ground cloves and black pepper, wrapped in foil, into the smoker at two hundred over hickory. Twelve hours. The same routine as last year because last year's ham was right and I don't fix what isn't broken, which is a philosophy I should probably apply to more areas of my life but currently only applies to ham.

Clay's outpatient program breaks for the holidays — two weeks off, which worries me more than it should. Two weeks without structure. Two weeks without the counselor and the group and the mandatory check-ins that have been holding him steady like the walls of a tunnel hold back the mountain. I told him to call me if he needs anything. He said I know, Dad. I said call me even if you don't think you need anything. He said I know, Dad. Two I-knows. I'll take them.

Christmas Eve: Travis and Jolene, Amber (she traded Thanksgiving for Christmas this year, which means she's here), and Clay. Five Hensleys plus Jolene. The ham came out Thursday morning, the glaze dark and crackling, the smoke and sugar and mustard merging into something that smells like December in Harlan County, like Betty's kitchen, like childhood on a platter. Cornbread dressing from the freezer — I made extra at Thanksgiving, which was smart and also paranoid. Mashed potatoes. Green beans. Jolene's mac and cheese with the three kinds of cheese. Amber brought a cake from a bakery in Lexington that was beautiful and expensive and tasted like sugar and competence.

After dinner Clay washed dishes and I dried. Same as last Thanksgiving. He washed, I dried, we didn't talk, the water ran, the plates stacked. He's been sober for three months, counting from the DUI, which is a different kind of counting than the year-plus he had before, because this sobriety has a court order behind it and a price tag attached and the knowledge that the next mistake is jail, not rehab. He washed a plate and handed it to me and our hands touched and I held the plate a second longer than necessary and he noticed and didn't say anything and I didn't say anything and that silence was not the heavy kind. That silence was the kind that means we're here and we're okay and the plate is clean.

The ham was the centerpiece, but it’s never really just about the centerpiece — it’s about everything that surrounds it, the dishes that fill in the spaces between people at the table. This Christmas, with Clay steady and the silence over the drying rack the good kind of quiet, I kept thinking about how smoke and sweetness do something to a room that nothing else quite replicates. Slow-Cooked Smokies hit that same note: low heat, a little sugar, a little smoke, no fuss — the kind of thing you set going and let the house fill up around it, which is exactly the kind of cooking a holiday like this one calls for.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 2–3 hours | Total Time: 3 hours 5 minutes | Servings: 12

Ingredients

2 lbs miniature smoked sausages (cocktail smokies)
1 cup barbecue sauce
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon yellow mustard
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Combine the sauce. In a medium bowl, whisk together the barbecue sauce, brown sugar, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard, garlic powder, and black pepper until the sugar is mostly dissolved and the sauce is smooth.
Load the slow cooker. Place the smoked sausages in a 3- to 4-quart slow cooker. Pour the sauce over them and stir gently to coat every sausage evenly.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, or on HIGH for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, stirring once halfway through. The sauce will thicken and the sausages will take on a deep, glossy color.
Keep warm and serve. Switch the slow cooker to the WARM setting. Serve directly from the crock with toothpicks alongside. These hold well for up to 2 hours on warm without losing quality.

Nutrition (per serving)

Slow-Cooked Smokies — The Ham Was Right, and So Was the Night