Smoked, stuffed turkey legs have broken out of the State Fair and onto menus across the state.
January 16, 2021
The Dirty South turkey leg from Smoke-A-Holics BBQ in Fort Worth stuffed with dirty rice and sausage.
Photograph by Daniel Vaughn
Many food vendors suffered severe financial setbacks when the State Fair of Texas was canceled last year. One of them was Yoakum Packing Company, which produces the item that has become the symbol for this sort of festival atmosphere: the giant smoked turkey leg. If you’ve eaten a turkey leg from a tent or booth with the Yoakum Packing, Farm Pac, or Hans Mueller name on it, you’ve eaten the company’s cured and smoked drumsticks. Plenty of other vendors also use its product, and according to Farm Pac’s president Glen Kusak, in a normal year that means 70,000 turkey legs are consumed during the State Fair alone. That was a big hit to business, not to mention the other fairs and festivals that were canceled in 2020.