What’s in a Name?

Some houses smell like cookies or fresh laundry. My grandpa’s childhood home smelled like kielbasa.

The moment you set foot in the tiny old home in Carnegie, Pa. — the one he’d grown up in with his parents, fresh off the boat from Poland, plus his 14 other siblings — the air wrapped around you in a cloud of Polish sausage. It wasn’t subtle. My great-aunts (or ciocis, as we call them in Polish) would all huddle around the kitchen, the smell settling into the walls themselves.

My grandpa came from a loud, raucous family — imagine trying to get a word in growing up in a home with 15 kids! He had a booming voice, a near-permanent twinkle of mischief in his eye and a deep pride in his heritage. Every summer before school started, I’d ring him up to fill him in on my new teacher for the year. Without fail, he’d repeat their name back to me with seriousness. “Smith? Is that a Polish name?” he’d ask, no matter how plain the name was. Then, he’d urge me to ask them if they were Polish — which always made me giggle, because he and I both knew the answer would be a squeal of “No, Grandpa!”

My grandpa passed away in 2019, leaving behind an empty space at the kitchen table and in my heart. Now and then, I feel the urge to call and update him on my life, before I remember it’s not so easy anymore. I just know he would have gotten a kick out of this issue’s cover story on Kiolbassa Smoked Meats. I can picture him hunched over the same 1950s red-and-chrome kitchen table that now sits in my own home, carefully reading each word, a magnifying glass pressed to the pages — just like he did every time he got his hands on anything I wrote.

He would have loved the Kiolbassa name — loved that it literally means sausage in Polish and that a Polish family built their livelihood around it. He would have appreciated the pride, the family culture and the way tradition lives on in every link.

When I visited the Kiolbassa plant in San Antonio this summer, I couldn’t help but think of him. Inside the facility, that familiar, smoky aroma clings to your hair and clothes. The people making the sausage aren’t just clocking in — they’re carrying on a craft. While the name might be what catches your attention first, what keeps Kiolbassa going is something Grandpa would’ve appreciated even more: consistency, care and a longstanding commitment to doing things the right way.

Behind every snap of casing and curl of smoke is a rigorous FSQA program that blends small-batch tradition with modern food safety. Yes, it’s a story about sausage — but also about what happens when a company stays true to its roots while growing far beyond them.

I know that would make Grandpa smile.