BELLAIRE — Warm-weather cooks often flock to Bellaire Smokehouse for its signature apple-wood smoked bacon, sausage and jerky, smoked fish, fish sausage, and whitefish and salmon pâté.
But when COVID-19 hit, owner Karen Watters beefed up the seasonal, small-town smokehouse market’s offerings with something new: take-out dinner specials or “meal deals” once or more a week.
So far dishes have included beef stew, steak and mushroom pie, beef and mushroom pasta, lobster mac and cheese, smoked salmon deviled eggs, stuffed peppers, chicken and biscuits, chicken Alfredo, and potato cheese soup.
Besides fully prepared dishes ready to cook or heat, the menu includes partially prepared meal deals like ready-to-grill carne asada flank steak packaged with tortilla shells, or ready-to-heat seasoned sloppy Joe ground beef paired with burger buns.
All are prepared in a 16-quart roasting pan or slow cooker, in the market’s commercial kitchen, portioned out in four-person servings, and announced on the store’s Facebook page.
“This whole thing started in May with what’s happening with the virus and people cooking more,” said Watters, who introduced the dinners with a sort of meal kit featuring smokehouse products.
“The first thing I did was (chuck) roast,” she said. “People got the roast and potatoes, carrots and onions to put in with it and cook at home, and they seemed to like it. Once I started doing it, people would call and say, ‘Do you have a dinner special?’ It kind of gives them something to cook or warm up, and gives them something to do.”
The meals were a lucky find for Kelley Nelson of Bellaire. The Shanty Creek Resort IT professional has been busier than ever during the pandemic, which has required her to provide support to other staff working from home.
“After a long day of work it’s nice to pick up something and pop it in the oven and it’s ready to go,” said Nelson, who gets a notification alert whenever the smokehouse posts on Facebook. “And you get a lot. The carne asada was two pounds — that’s a lot of meat. I just turn around and freeze it and use it later.”
Watters takes inspiration for the international-flavor meals from her granddaughter’s one-time SnackCrate subscription.
“Every month she got a box (of snacks) from a different country. We’d get together with neighbors and all make a dish from it,” she said.
Watters, 64, grew up in Saginaw, married her high school sweetheart, Tim, and eventually moved with him to Charlevoix, where they opened a bed-and-breakfast. After selling the business four years later, they bought a Queen Anne Victorian house in Bellaire with the intention of opening another B & B.
Instead they started the Bellaire Smokehouse in their detached garage, then converted the space into a store with three, connected, smokehouses. Tim died in 2016, but Watters continues to run the business with help from her son, two grandsons and a neighbor.
“It just started out word of mouth. Now everyone knows where it is,” she said.
Watters’ culinary training and experience includes 40 years working in the restaurant business, including 20 at the smokehouse and stints as a waitress at the Bay Harbor Yacht Club and at Whiskers and Lulu’s in Bellaire.
She’s also a seasoned home cook.
“My parents cooked, my mom cooked, I cooked,” she said. “And you never cooked for two; you made a pot. We always had people over.”
COVID-19 has inspired more than half (54 percent) of consumers to cook more, according to a survey by food and beverage communications firm HUNTER, while also sparking more takeout, delivery, mail-order and meal kits. But Watters plans to continue offering dinner specials even after the pandemic ends.
Her culinary philosophy is simple: “Food is love,” she said. “It’s a way to show your love to people.”
The Link LonkJuly 18, 2020 at 08:00PM
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COVID convenience: New dinner specials beef up smokehouse offerings - Traverse City Record Eagle
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