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 (My Aunt 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.
Fresh blood from one pig
Strain the blood to get the clots out. If clots are big, remove them with a big wooden spoon.
Add the exact same amount of milk as there is blood.
Put milk and blood into a large bowl.
Add:
1 ½ large onions – cut up very fine
1 pound pig lard (fat) ++ from the pig
2 Tbs. salt
1 Tbs. pepper ++ Not a full tablespoon. And Ma Tante used an actual soup spoon.
1 Tbs. ground cloves ++ Not a full tablespoon. And Ma Tante used an actual soup spoon.
Grease two bread pans with oil.
Pour blood mixture into pans.
Cook at 400 for one hour.Enjoy! ++ I recommend cutting the Boudin into slices or squares and frying it.
After the rain comes the rainbow. (Our farm in St. Antoine de Tilly, Quebec)
