King of Kielbasa, Prince of Polish Sausage

Joe Godlewski has spent years of his life and thousands of dollars trying to make a profit from a passion.

Finally, at 62, the part-time sausage maker has six recipes for success.

In a tiny test kitchen behind the barbershop where he does $5 haircuts, Godlewski gives out samples of the homemade kielbasa he has perfected over the last seven years.

Promises of national distribution came and went, and a solo venture failed when Godlewski’s employees oversalted and ruined thousands of pounds of meat. He didn’t have the money to start again.

Finally, though, Godlewski has a deal he can live with.

Alfery’s Quality Meats of Mount Pleasant, Pa., is producing his Polish sausages, selling them on a Web site, https://www.alferys.com, and at the plant’s retail store about 30 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.

Godlewski also has delivered batches to Bill’s Corner Market in the Eastern Panhandle town of Springfield and to Wayne’s Meats in nearby Keyser.

And a national supermarket chain has inquired about the products.

“It’s a tough business, and it’s even tougher trying to get something done well,” he said. “The big companies are scared of somebody putting out a good product at a good price.”

And despite the earlier missteps, Godlewski is optimistic.

“I’ve heard a lot of promises, but you’ve got to believe somebody sometime,” he said. “I have not got a penny back yet, but I have cast my bread in the water and I hope El Nino doesn’t blow it away. I hope it comes back like it’s supposed to.”

Michael Alfery, manager of the Pennsylvania plant, intends to build a customer base with supermarkets and Polish American groups.

The kielbasa--hot, sweet, regular, spiced, Polish pepper and all-purpose breakfast--are marketed under Godlewski’s name and a red, white and blue label that bears the slogan, “Yielding God’s Good Food.”

“He has a phenomenal way of coming up with flavors and has ideas of what people would need,” Alfery said. “We’ll be able to develop a market because of the product; it’s first quality, first rate.”

For Godlewski, who travels the region with an electric frying pan to peddle his product, the deal is a redemption of sorts.

“People won’t say, ‘He’s stupid’ or ‘He’s foolish’ and ‘He’s cooking for nothing.’ I’ve heard so much negativity,” he said. “Even some of my own family said, ‘Joe, you’re just throwing money down a hole.’

“I couldn’t get any interest for years. People would say, ‘What’s a barber know about meat?’ ”

But meat has been a part of Godlewski’s life since childhood. While other 8-year-olds were playing, Godlewski was helping his uncle run the family butcher shop in Curtisville, Pa., making sausage to customers’ specifications.

“All these recipes would float around in my head. I kept all those scraps of paper and at one point, I had a duffel bag full,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t buy anything in the store that was quality, so I got disgusted and started making my own.”

Sausage should taste good before the spice is added, Godlewski said. In part, that depends on which part of the animal the meat is taken from. Pork shoulder, for example, “has fat, but not too much,” he said.

“Everybody thinks you can just grind up pork and make pork sausage, but it’s not true,” he said. “It’s a lost art.”

The Godlewski clan eventually moved to Washington, D.C., and the next generation let the family business die.

Godlewski became a barber after the Korean War, married his wife, Sally, and began raising a family. But they fled the city and moved to West Virginia in 1975.

Godlewski squirreled away some money, using barbershop revenue and Social Security income to start a small business. It failed after the oversalting incident.

To make his recipes “idiot-proof,” Godlewski developed six spice blends now marketed in bulk by Food Innovations International of Indianapolis. For sausage, he adds one package to a quart of water and 25 pounds of meat. A tablespoon is enough for five pounds of meatloaf.

Making mass production easy was a key to success.

“That, and I had to do it all myself,” Godlewski said.

Godlewski, who sleeps just four hours a night, says he has spent more time in the kitchen than he’s ever spent in bed.

He’s now working on a lamb kielbasa and hopes to produce a line of smoked “Polish Gold” ready-to-eat hams. To qualify as a “Polish ham,” the meat must come from a pig that was fed grain every day and bituminous coal once a week.

“That’s the secret to a good-tasting ham,” Godlewski said. The coal keeps the pigs entrails clean. And he insists they like it.

Throughout life, Godlewski has kept in mind a childhood task: He once had the job of watching over a sow and her litter at feeding time.

“She didn’t have enough udders to feed them all, and my job was to make sure the one little hog didn’t go without,” he recalls. “He went underneath and over the top and up over the back, and finally, he’d wiggle himself a nipple and somebody else would be out in the cold. Invariably, he ate. Every time. And he grew up into a great, big boar.

“I kind of feel a little like him.”