[FWIW, if you don’t know what a kolache is, you are missing out in a big way. I don’t know how I’d live without kolaches if I ever left Texas. For a basic overview of kolaches, take a look at this article.]

My buddy, Barry, and I recently decided to undertake a very unscientific kolache comparison. Both Southern Maid and Karma Kolaches produce some very good kolaches – so we wanted to compare two different meat-filled kolaches (technically they’re called klobasneks or klobasniky, from the original Czech) in order to see which kolache shop does them better. We chose a more traditional one – sausage, jalapeño and cheese – as well as a very Texas-centric version – smoked brisket.

Sausage, jalapeño and cheese – Southern Maid advertises that they use Chappell Hill Sausage in their kolaches. It is not known where Karma gets their sausage from. Both were very good. However, the flavor of the Chappell Hill Sausage gave the Southern Maid the edge here.

Smoked brisket – Southern Maid’s smoked brisket was excellent. The flavor was very good. But the Karma version was larger and chock full of some really delicious brisket. The SM version had a heavier use of barbecue sauce, while Karma’s relied more on the flavor of the well-smoked meat itself, using less barbecue sauce.

For this round at least the score is 1-1. Just a general observation was that Southern Maid has a fluffier dough (yes, that is a technical term). We’ll have to put a few more kolaches head-to-head soon to see if there is a clear winner. So stay tuned.