Blood Pudding (or sausages) are served in French, Belgian, German, British, Quebec, Acadian, Creole, Austrian and Cajun cuisine.
This Blood Pudding a.k.a. Boudin is baked in loaf pans instead of sausage casing.
Photo courtesy of Banque D’Images
This is my 2nd post in the category Historic and Unusual Recipes. The first wasHow to Cook a Terrapin (or Turtle). I discovered that recipe in a very oldFanny Farmer Cookbookand posted it simply because I found it interesting. Guess what? Almost every day… week in and week out…How to Cook a Terrapin (or Turtle)appears in my list of ‘Readers Recent Favorites’. Who woulda thunk it? And now it’s gonna be interesting to see how well received this French Canadian Blood Puddingrecipe is! ; o )
I made French Canadian Blood Puddingonlyonce, using the blood from one of the pigs we raised. We planned to roast the pig on a special spit – and feed the neighbors, the local family, the family from Montreal and the family from the States.Luckily it was a BIG pig. So big it actually broke the rented spit… but that’s another story.
My husband’s family all told me I’d fed my pigs too much because, when butchered, they all had a lot of fat. They said I ‘babied’ all my animals. Hey, if you were a pig… and it was hot… wouldn’t you be happy if someone gently sprayed you with cold water. Of course you would. I rest my case.
My husband’s aunt Therese and I prepared the Blood Pudding at the Roy Family Farm in St. Flavien, Quebec (Canada) where my husband’s family has lived/farmed for the last seven generations. It’s a huge house with a huge kitchen. There’s a wood burning stove and a modern stove – a lovely mixture of old and new. (I remember visiting around 1970 and there was still a water pump in ‘The Summer Kitchen’. I’ll explain about Summer Kitchens another time.)
I just deleted the paragraph about hanging the pig upside down etc. I didn’t want to gross you out any more than necessary..
When I arrived at the old family farm with my bucket of pig blood, Ma Tante Therese (MyAunt in French.) was armed and ready with the necessary utensils and pans. Ma Tante didn’t speak much English and my French is far from great, but I managed to write down several of her old French Canadian recipes over the years, including this one for Blood Pudding, while I either helped or watched her cook. And an excellent cook she was.
My husband LOVED the Blood Pudding we’d made. And I was pretty darn proud of myself, let me tell you. I did take a tiny taste of it… Blood Pudding has an unusual texture – no surprise there. It does taste pretty good, if you can get beyond the ‘main ingredient’.
My husband loved to eat his Boudin cut into slices and fried. He especially loved it for breakfast with scrambled eggs. At the time I made the Blood Pudding my husband could only eat soft things due to oral cancer. You can imagine how pleased I was, especially at that point in his life, to have prepared something for him which he’d loved his whole life.
Life is short. Prepare your loved ones favorite dishes. Doing so truly is a gift of love!
This recipe for French Canadian Blood Pudding (Boudin) is prepared in two loaf pans.
I’m going to give you the recipe as I wrote it down – although sometimes I’ve written recipes from our French Canadian Aunts half in French and half in English.
Boudin, black pudding in English, is essentially pig's guts filled with blood and other ingredients, such as onions, spinach, etc. (French pronunciation: [budɛ̃]) The added ingredients vary in French, Luxembourgish, Belgian, Swiss, Québec, Acadian, Aostan, Louisiana Creole, and Cajun cuisine.
The boudin of Québec is made of lard, milk, onions and pork blood. It is served in a pan along with a sweet side or a sauce. Since 2018, the Goûte-Boudin de Boucherville association hands out a yearly prize for the best boudin.
Like haggis, Stornoway Black Pudding is a U.K. favorite that contains sheep's lungs. This ingredient makes it illegal to import into the United States, despite it being a regular menu item across the pond.
Artisanal butchers across Acadiana still make red boudin, in full compliance with USDA regulations, which require that the pork blood used in the sausage come from inspected hogs. Licensed abbatoirs can indeed sell pork blood from freshly killed, inspected hogs.
This mentality is evident in boudin, a Cajun sausage made of pork and rice, and other sausages like andouille and tasso, which were invented to utilize every part of a butchered animal. On the other hand, most Creole food incorporates a diverse range of ingredients and can sometimes call for complicated processes.
Most locals don't even make it out of the parking lot with their links, they just squeeze the filling right out of the casing and into their mouths. (Some folks eat the casing, too). If that sounds too messy, just spread the filling on a cracker or between slices of bread.
To pronounce it correctly, boo – like a ghost says, and then start like you're saying the name Dan, but just don't pronounce the n on the end! Boudin in Cajun Country can be found at grocery stores, delis, gas stations, weddings, birthday parties, holiday parties, but very rarely in a restaurant.
Boudin is a high-protein, iron-rich Cajun dish, but watch out for the sodium and fat content. Enjoy it in moderation as part of a balanced diet for a tasty treat. Boudin can be a good source of essential nutrients like Vitamin B-12 and niacin, but be mindful of the calorie and carbohydrate content.
Poutine. Poutine is perhaps Quebec's signature dish, consisting of French fries topped with cheese curds and a rich, brown gravy. It is said to have been invented in the dairy farming town of Warwick in 1957 when a customer requested French fries and cheese curds to be served together.
Boudin's famous San Francisco Sourdough French Bread originated in 1849, in a tiny, old-world bakery on Dupont Street. There, a French immigrant named Isidore Boudin first kneaded a hearty dough, fermented with wild yeast and then formed it into the shape of a traditional French loaf.
Tarte au sucre is a delicious sugar-rich pie popular around Quebec, including the capital. The traditional dessert dish is similar to the tarte au sucre of northern France, albeit with one key difference.
Haggis. The national dish of Scotland is banned in America as there's a 1971 law that states foods must not contain sheep lungs. Slaughtering horses for human consumption is illegal in the USA (though technically, consuming horse meat isn't).
Legality. In 1971, it became illegal to import haggis into the US from the UK due to a ban on food containing sheep lung, which constitutes 10–15% of the traditional recipe. The ban encompasses all lungs, as fluids such as stomach acid and phlegm may enter the lung during slaughter.
In this episode of the Xtalks Food Podcast, Sydney talks about the top 10 foods banned in the US and why. The list includes unpasteurized milk, Kinder Surprise Chocolate Eggs, sassafras oil, Four Loko and Ackee as well as shark fins, sea turtles, Japanese puffer fish, beluga caviar and haggis.
It is similar to regular boudin, which contains pork meat, pork liver, rice, vegetables, and seasonings, all stuffed in a natural pork casing, except with fewer seasonings and with fresh pig's blood added. "Blood Boudin is literally just Boudin and you add blood," says Alan LaFluer, musician and Boucherie host.
Black pudding is also called a blood pudding or blood sausage, and in Ireland is known as drisheen. In France, black pudding is known as boudin noir and the Spanish word for black pudding is morcilla.
What is boudin? Boudin is traditionally a blend of cooked pork, rice, onions, peppers and seasonings stuffed into a sausage casing, although boudin makers today sometimes get creative with unusual fillings like seafood.
Black pudding is a distinct regional type of blood sausage originating in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is made from pork or occasionally beef blood, with pork fat or beef suet, and a cereal, usually oatmeal, oat groats, or barley groats.
Introduction: My name is Terrell Hackett, I am a gleaming, brainy, courageous, helpful, healthy, cooperative, graceful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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