. . . technically cajun boudin blanc, but I'm going to stick with just "boudin" is a pork, pork liver, and rice sausage beloved by my husband. It can can be eaten as a sausage, a stuffing, a dressing, or as "boudin balls" which are coated in breadcrumbs and deep fried.
I wanted to make some home-made sausage as a renal diet alternative to the sodium laced offerings from the store, and boudin stood out because it is only ~1/2 meat by weight, so a 4 ounce sausage is only 14g protein. Plus it is yummy, and the other flavors involved compensate for low sodium.
I drew from two recipes to make my own, one of which was Emeril Lagasse's here:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/boudin-sausage-recipe0.html
The other was from The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine by John D Folse.
Equipment
You need a sausage grinder and stuffer for this recipe. I used the Kitchenaid attachment, which I found to work well. Whatever you use, you want to grind on a coarse grind.
Ingredients
This is for 10lbs boudin. I originally made 20, but it was too much to work with.
2lbs pork liver
4lbs boneless pork shoulder
3lbs cooked white rice (6 cups)
1/2 lb green onion
1/2 lb fresh parsley
2tbspn black pepper
2tbspn cayenne pepper
2tbspn chipotle pepper
1.5tbspn salt (you could reduce to 1tbspn if you want to bring the sodium down farther)
1 bunch celery
1 white onion
20 - 30 feet hog casings
Instructions:
The night before start soaking your casings to remove salt.
You'll want to rinse them off, then leave them to soak over night, and then change the water 2-3 more times with an hour of soaking in between before you stuff them. You can use warm water to soak the casings. The more you soak, the less residual salt there will be.
Cube the pork shoulder and the pork liver and place in a pot with the celery and onion (you can also add a bell pepper, but my husband doesn't particularly like those). Simmer together for 1 and 1/2 hours.
After that time is up, remove all the solids into a large bowl, but reserve the liquid. Let it cool to room temperature, or even cooler. Most grinders work optimally with very cold ingredients, though I did not have a problem grinding these warm. You can go through and pick out the onion and celery, but I did not bother too.
Coarsely chop up the green onion and parsley and mix it together with the meat.
Grind everything up together.
Add the spices (salt and peppers) and mix thoroughly. Then add the rice and mix thoroughly.
Lastly add reserved cooking liquid until the mixture moistens and sticks together, but is not soppy. I would say ~2 cups added 1/2 cup at a time with stirring in between.
Now taste the mix and make sure you like the flavor profile.
If you want to use the mix for boudin balls or stuffing you are done.
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| A messy business |
Stuffing Links:
If you want to make sausage you will need to stuff them using a sausage stuffer.
One mistake I ran into was stuffing too tightly, which caused my links to burst upon later cooking due to the expansion of the rice. Therefore I recommend that you avoid air bubbles and fill the casing, but not so much that it is turgid, or completely full.
The procedure I used was to load the casing onto the stuffer, then begin running sausage through to remove air bubbles. Once sausage had begun to emerge, I tied off the casing with a simple slip not. I then alternated pushing sausage through, and adjusting the casing to maximize fill (as noted above I was too enthusiastic about this).
Once the casing was stuffed, I twisted links alternating directions.
You can find good videos online that cover this procedure.
Both recipes I used recommend steaming or boiling the boudin before storage. This caused mine to burst, but I think this was because of over stuffing. Internet recipes are full of contradictions on this.
I think there are 3 viable options:
Steam for 10min in a single layer then cool and store
Boil for 5min then cool and store
Store as is and steam or boil right before use/grilling
When I make these again I will try one and update.
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| Delicious with mustard! (Brown mustard is better. . .) |
Nutrition:
There is too much variability due to boiling, etc. for me to feel confident posting a nutrition profile, but here are the key facts:
In a 4oz link there are ~ 2oz protein, 300mg sodium, and 200mg potassium, 150mg phosphorous.
All of these are approximation, but I tried to err on the high side.
The sodium does not take into account any salt left in the casings after soaking.
