Homemade Saucisson: Boudin Blanc

Making sausage is really fun and we've made a lot of it at Le Cordon Bleu. It tastes much better than the commercial kind filled with chemicals, additives, and un-identifyable meat. It's not difficult to make if you have a meat grinder (or a butcher who will grind it for you), a plastic pastry bag, and a sausage pastry tip. The trickiest part is finding the natural casing (intestines cleaned) and pure pork fat or fatback (so it won't dry out). After you get the basic technique down you can get really crazy with maple sausage breakfast links or fiery Italian sausage, the possibilities are endless...

This article is for Matthew Rose who asked me how to make sausage, specifically Boudin Noir. I prefer Boudin Blanc for it's delicate flavor and lack of blood, however, the methods are the same. The problem with Boudin Noir is finding the blood. Sometimes we get pints of it in the kitchens at LCB for specific recipes like Poulet en Barbouille – pint of pig blood anyone? Blood when it's cooked binds ingredients together and turns a beautiful dark chocolate color, but it takes some getting used to. Here's the technique:

Grind all the meat and fat up together. Weigh meat and add salt and pepper to it (20g salt/ kilo meat, 4g pepper/ kilo meat). Then mix meat and all precooked & cooled ingredients together in a big bowl. Load up your pastry bag with meat filing and pastry tip and scrunch casing over the tip then tie off the end of the casing. Gently squeeze away. Make sure not to overfill so you can tie off links with cooking string. Once finished poke a few holes in casing with toothpick, especially if there's any air bubbles. Boil for 20 minutes then fry up! Voila!

After cross referencing many different Boudin Blanc recipes they all seem to be the same with the exception of whether or not to add breadcrumbs instead of potato starch. Here's the old tried and true standby sans breadcrumbs...

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Boudin Blanc

Ingredients
400 g pork leg, shoulder, or loin (veal or chicken can be substituted)
150 pork fatback
20g potato starch or bread crumbs
1/2 onion, finely diced cooked and cooled (not browned)
6 egg whites
80 ml whipping cream
300 ml milk cooked with an onion and the peel of 1 orange (for flavor)
bay leaf and thyme
pinch nutmeg
20g salt
3g white pepper
1 meter sausage casing
kitchen string

Cooking liquid
500 ml milk
2 litres water
30 ml orange flower water

Instructions
1. Sweat onions with just a little butter over low heat (don't brown). Add a pinch of salt & sugar.
2. For aromatic milk simmer low (60˚C maximum) with orange peel, bay leaf, thyme, and sliced onion.
3. Mix ground meat with onions, pepper, salt, potato starch.
4. In a cuisinart or blender put meat mixture and blend in egg whites, milk, and then cream till just mixed. Don't turn cream into butter.
5. Start cooking liquid simmering (68-70˚C)
6. Load up your pastry bag with meat filing and pastry tip and scrunch casing over the tip then tie off the end of the casing. Gently squeeze. Make sure not to overfill so you can tie off links with cooking string. Once finished poke a few holes in casing with toothpick, especially if there's any air bubbles.
7. Poach in cooking liquid for 20 minutes. Put in ice bath to cool. Then fry up in some peanut oil until golden brown.

Comments

[Jeorg]

i've often wondered if it was difficult to make sausage since i love it so much. we have found some wonderful organic sausages here in ky that "go crazy" and add apples and fruits that give the sausage a delicately sweet flavor.

my biggest complaint with store bought sausages is that they mix meats instead of keeping it consistant. because of that, i can't have sausages in restaurants.

[MATTHEW ROSE]

Fantastique Ms. Glaze. Not at all that complicated. I think I'll ask the butchers I know here along the Rue Daguerre what they do... There's one place that specializes in sausages. I usually buy them there – sometimes there are pistachio bits in them. Varied, in a way like wine or cheeses are.

A Curious thought. I was once on the Rue Oberkampf eating boudin blanc and the texture of that was nothing at all like anything I'd ever had. It didn't quite seem like meat. I'll have to enquire.

Merci pour la recette... MR

[Melissa]

Great post, where (in Paris) do you buy your casings? What is the french name for it?
Thanks!
Melissa

[gillian]

I had a teacher who had worked as a butcher and told me enver to buy sausages because they were filled with old scraps of meat left lying around. I've been traumatized ever since. I would however, love to make my own filled with proper meat, and maybe some sundried tomatoes and spices. Would be fun to play around with. Merci for the daily inspiration.

[king Negrito]

OHHHHH... the sausage secret unleashed, that s great ..... can i taste one of yours one day ???

[maitresse]

I was reading this piece with such joy and thought momentarily of making my own until I got to the part about the pig's blood, and then from somewhere deep within my little Jewish conscience piped up and bonked me over the head saying "oy vez iz mir, your ancestors escaped the knives of the Cossacks so you could drink pig's blood??" Here in France, we have officially reached the realm we can call The Opposite of Kosher.

...but it doesn't keep me from regularly ingesting other parts of the pig... there's just something about blood!

[Maureen Molleron]

I love making sausages, but cannot find a way to buy the casings in Paris. I've asked my butcher, who thinks I'm an American freak. I presently make sausage patties, because I cannot find the casings.
Do you know where I can buy them in Paris?

[Keith]

Is it possible to get the recipe converted to standard measurement?
May I also have one for Garlic Sausage?

Thanks

[anthony]

Thank you! I'm having a sausage making party this weekend (30 metres of casings - eek!) and this was exactly the recipe I wanted.

[Air Jordan]

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.