A Flint Coney Matchup: Chef Marty Embry vs. Angelo’s Original

On the left is a coney made with Marty Embry’s Flint Coney sauce. On the right is a similar coney, but topped with Angelo’s original sauce.

I gotta say this at the beginning: I really don’t like basketball. I’m a computer geek, have been since 1976, a hardware geek since 1983, a food geek since I last saw my 34-inch waist about 18 years ago. I’ll go to basketball games to watch my daughter and her team cheer, but the last time I saw a basketball game myself George “Meadowlark” Lemon had probably just turned 40. (He was born in 1932, so you get the idea.) It started as an embarrassing moment at Flint’s former IMA Auditorium. Meadowlark was yelling things at the crowd, and suddenly dad harrassed the man right back as loudly as Meadowlark. I was shocked when the Clown Prince got right into it, and he and dad were yelling back-and-forth off-and-on for the remainder of the game. I’ve never had that much fun at a basketball game since.

So you’re probably asking: What the hey is Marty Embry’s pic doing on this blog? If you follow the sport you may know he played at DePaul in Chicago in ’82 and ’83, then went off to play pro ball in countries such as Spain and Italy. What’s he doing on Luna Pier Cook?

A ‘From the Court to the Kitchen‘ apron. The orange material with the sillouette is basketbull surface material.

Marty and I met on Facebook a couple weeks ago and discovered we are, as Marty puts it, “fellow coneyheads”. He’s probably as much an afficianado of Flint-style coneys as I am if not moreso, and has spent considerable time developing his own recipe for an authentic sauce. However, instead of simply giving the recipe away as I have, Marty’s taken his concept a step further. After running a restaurant in Flint for a while, he’s now bottled his Coney Sauce Spice and is offering it online so anyone anywhere can make an authentic Flint-style sauce at home without much trouble at all.

Three jars of Marty’s sauce in our kitchen, along with some Koegel Viennas.

Earlier this week I ordered some of Marty’s jarred Coney Sauce Spice from him and planned to make a batch this weekend. But then a thought occured to me: We were planning on being in Frankenmuth yesterday to take my sisters to Zehnder’s Restaurant for a late Christmas dinner. That meant we would be driving through Flint twice. The question then became this: Marty says sauce made with his mix is as authentic as you can get without going to Angelo’s … so would it be an authentic match between the two sauces? There was only one way to find out.

Heading into Frankenmuth yesterday morning we first stopped at Kern’s Sausages, which is south of Zehnder’s by about a mile. The butcher there packaged me up a pound of 85/15 ground beef for use with Marty’s mix. After eating at Zehnder’s with my sisters I headed down Dort Hwy, hung a right at Davison Rd., and headed straight for my personal Mecca: Angelo’s Coney Island, two blocks down from my old apartment on Franklin. After shelling out almost $24.00 for a quart of still-warm sauce, we headed south with that amazing smell wafting through the van. We then took Barb home, and headed to Oliver T’s in my hometown of Grand Blanc to get a decent Spanish onion called for by Marty’s directions.

Early this afternoon I started working through the matchup. About a cup of the original Angelo’s coney sauce simmered slowly in a small pot at the back of the stove. I cut that whole darned onion, knowing I wasn’t going to use it all but just really enjoying the smell of a good onion. Not some el-cheapo from Kroger that had been in the bin for a week, this onion was crisp, just a touch juicy, and the odor sent me out of the kitchen a few times. Mary commented from the living room about how nice things were smelling.

To get the consistency correct, Marty directs users to add warm water to the ground beef, then mix it by hand. He writes, “The mixture will be soupy, like a melted milk shake.” I thought this would be a bit on the strange side, however it turned out to be exactly what was needed.

I’m not going to go into all the details here of making Flint Coney Sauce Marty’s way. Basically, it’s the onions, beef and water mixture, and his spice mix, along with the techniques he describes on the jar. It couldn’t be simpler.

Now, for the result …

Flint Coney Sauce made with Marty’s spice mix and techniques is on the left. The sauce on the right is Angelo’s Original Sauce. At first glance there’s a serious difference in color. Having made Flint Coney Sauce with heart and kidney included, and having tasted the Angelo’s sauce this afternoon, I can unequivocally state the color diffence is because most people using Marty’s spice mix will use only ground beef like I did this afternoon, while the Angelo’s sauce obviously contains the same organ meats I used in an earlier recipe. In those earlier experiments I found this same color difference.

In the above image it’s easy to see the textures of the two sauces are almost the same. Marty’s trick of adding water and mixing to milkshake consistency is, as I said, quite accurate.

The two coneys in the top pic of this post were the two coneys I ate for lunch. The spicing of the two were virtually identical. Marty’s did seem to have a little extra “something” that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But it was a “good” something, so that was fine.

The instructions that came with the Angelo’s sauce did include something I wasn’t aware of:

Use small strainer to dip coney sauce out. Let juices drain for 6 seconds. Flip coney sauce in the strainer 6 to 8 times, and use 2 Tbsp per hot dog.

Finally, here’s the limb I’ll hang my hat on:

I ran Luna Pier’s beachhouse during the summer of 2008, selling Flint-Style Coneys we made from scatch. If I ever do that again at some point, I’ll certainly use Marty’s sauce mix instead.

There’s a caveat in all of this. It’s that dang-blasted organ meat.

These are two coneys made with Marty’s Coney Sauce Spice. There’s none of Angelo’s sauce to be found here. Once I photographed these, they went to Mary.

If there’s one thing I’ve found it’s that, if someone hasn’t grown up on the sauce made with organ meats, they really won’t like it. When Adam and I finally completed the version of my sauce made with the beef heart and kidney, Briahna and Mary both turned their noses up at it. The flavors of the organ meats were just enough to turn them off from it. Subsequently, others have said the same thing about that particular version.

This made me wonder about an incident that happened at the Beachhouse that summer. A few twenty-somethings got out of a car, looked at my sign about Flint-style coneys and one guy laughingly yelled, “We’re trying to get away from Flint!” It turned out they had eaten at Angelo’s the day before. After eating my version, that same guy told me my version was better. It may very well have been that he didn’t like the organ meats.

Hopefully next weekend Adam and I can make a version of Marty’s sauce with what Marty refers to as “rough ground”:

Rough ground is a butchers blend of useless scraps of meat. It’s a disgusting looking bag of soupy, cut up or ground animal parts. Your blend of hearts and kidneys is a part of rough ground. Add bits of beef … and pork, heart valves and so forth…roughly ground together. Typically, you can ask a butcher for a pound, 5 pounds..10 pounds of rough ground and they’ll go in the back and look in the meat bin and grab the meat that they would typically throw away and grind it up for you..but charge you!

Mary’s made a couple suggestions based on what she likes. After considering that, I know have five total variations, all based on beef:

1. Beachhouse version with ground-up hot dogs
2. Authentic version with beef heart and kidney
3. Marty’s version with all beef
4. Marty’s version with ground-up hot dogs
5. Marty’s version with beef heart and kidney

Adam and I will work on those last two next weekend, with number 5 being for Adam and I, and number 4 being for the rest of the gang.

Now … after four hot dogs this afternoon though, I think I need some beer. And an antacid …