Boudin Blanc

From
Edited by Sara Roahen & John T. Edge, The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook (2010), page 146. The University of Georgia Press. Recipe by (the appropriately named) Donald Link of New Orleans, Louisiana.

About the Book
The Southern Foodways Alliance, based at the University of Mississippi, is an institute whose focus is to “document, study, and celebrate the diverse food cultures of the changing American South.” Their book pays homage to the many community cookbooks of the South (spiral-bound, of course), and those handwritten recipes tucked away in closets or shoe boxes. There is no heavy regional focus, or any attempt to tell you how a certain food must be prepared. It’s just a bunch of great recipes by people like Eula Mae Doré of Avery Island, Louisiana and Martha Foose of Pluto Plantation, Mississippi.

What’s the Dish?
This is a New Orleans-style boudin blanc (as opposed to the French version), a soft sausage stuffed with rice, pork shoulder, pork liver, green chiles, fresh herbs, and various spices. This is a protein-extender — meaning it’s a way to stretch the meat you’ve got. It’s also a way to find a home for a couple of the tougher to cook, miscellaneous parts of a pig (shoulder, liver). Like many necessity-driven inventions, it’s also really damn good.

This was also the first time I made sausage, and it’s a rather time consuming, but fascinating, recipe. The shoulder and liver are cut into 1-inch cubes, then stirred together with most of the other ingredients (other than the rice), and left to refrigerate for at least an hour. Then the pork mixture is just covered with water in a large stock pot, and simmered for close to 2 hours.

Then the mixture is strained, and the liquid is reserved. The meat mixture is either chopped up or given a course grind (I chopped), then mixed with cooked rice, parsley, green onions, and the reserved liquid. After about a ten-minute stir, the super-moist filling is fed into natural hog casings, and made into sausages. After that, they are poached in hot (not bubbling) water for 10 minutes. They can be served either in the casing, or opened up as a rice dish.

This took me a very long time, but I had a lot of fun; stuffing and twisting as spicy, porky liquid cascaded down the side of the sausage maker, ran across the kitchen counter, and dripped onto the floor.

Number of Attempts
1.

Mistakes
My links wound up a little longer than the recommended 6- to 8-inches. It didn’t cause any major problems in their enjoyment.

Modifications
None, other than the link-size.

Good Surprises
I sort of know how to make sausage! But even when working with an unfamiliar dish, and completely new methods, the resulting dish was a success. That’s the sign of a good recipe.

Also — poblanos and jalapeños go great with pork shoulder and liver. But especially with fancy, humanely raised ones.

Bad Surprises
The wetness of the sausage made for a messy ordeal, but that’s just how it goes.

How Was It?
I mainly ate the boudin blanc in rice-form, treating the sausage casing as a cooking vessel. But it’s a truly excellent dish, with a little of that back-end offal funk, fortified with spicy peppers, and fresh herbs. Is it for everybody? No. But it’s a good way to weed out the wimps amongst your friends.

Would I Make It Again?
That’s sort of a loaded question. Yes, I’m perfectly willing to, but I would prefer to do so alongside another cooking enthusiast, with whom I can share all the time consuming, tubular pleasures. Plus, it is pretty badass to show up to a party with 4 pounds of your own boudin blanc.