In Luling, Wayne Baker grew up on the basics of barbecue. Brisket, ribs, and beef sausage came wrapped up in butcher paper at City Market, the favored barbecue joint of his youth. “I didn’t really know a barbecue plate existed,” he told me at his barbecue joint, Baker Boys BBQ in Gonzales. The Baker boys are a little less orthodox than City Market, but then Wayne and his father Phil, who opened the place together in 2015, brought in a lot of their competition barbecue knowledge to the pit room.

Wayne Baker with his Stump’s Smoker

You won’t find a stack of wood or an offset smoker at Baker Boys. They cook with oak lump charcoal in an insulted cabinet smoker by Stump’s. Their menu is also quite a bit wider than the average barbecue joint in these parts. Turkey breast, half chickens, and smoked pork loin join the standards like brisket and ribs. The make a mean homemade beef and pork sausage as well, but it was an item I’d never seen before that caught my eye: stuffed chicken legs.

The key is finding large chicken legs. “I like them about 1/2 lb apiece,” Wayne Baker told me. He said his Phil is usually the one who preps them, but Wayne showed me the process anyway (he says Phil does them de-boning far more quickly).

Start with large chicken legs

 

 

Turn the knife around the top of the chicken leg to separate the meat from the bone

 

Peel the meat from the bone

 

Cut the meat off the bone and season it. This will be the inside of the stuffed leg

 

Turn the meat inside out again so the skin is on the outside, and get a thin strip of onion and jalapeño

 

Stuff the onion and jalapeño inside, season the skin, and they’re ready for the smoker

 

The finished product

The skin around the outside contracts as the meat cooks and pulled the ingredients together. They’re then finished over direct heat charcoal to get the skin crisp. It’s a unique item I was happy to stumble upon.  They’ve become a popular item, and the Baker boys smoke thirty or so a day on the weekends. The dark meat says juicy, and works far better than white meat. It’s one of the best new barbecue items I’ve tried, and I’ve only found it on this barbecue joint menu in Gonzales, Texas.

Baker Boys BBQ
1404 Sarah DeWitt Dr.
Gonzales, TX 78629