Andouille de Vire (Norman Smoked Tripe Andouille)

Andouille de Vire is the Norman andouille: a fat, black-skinned sausage made almost entirely of the pig’s digestive tract — large intestine and stomach cut into long strips, salted, packed lengthwise into a gut, cold-smoked over beech for more than a month, soaked, then cooked for about six hours and eaten cold, sliced thin, with bread and a glass of cider or pommeau. It is offal from end to end; the guts are the meat. It is also completely unrelated to the Cajun andouille in the collection, which is a smoked pork-shoulder sausage that kept only the French word. The diagnostic, when sliced, is an irregular marbled mosaic of strips. The neat concentric rings sometimes credited to it belong to its Breton cousin, andouille de Guémené, which is built by threading tubes of intestine one inside another. This is a briefing as much as a formula. The traditional month of smoke happens in a Norman smokehouse in winter, and a home version is a serious, slow and smelly project that depends on spotless cleaning and a cold smoker. I have not made this one yet; the method is built from French descriptions of Vire production and is untested.

Ingredients

OFFAL (about 3 kg / 6.6 lb, cleaned weight)

• 2 kg (4.4 lb) pork large intestine (chaudins / chitterlings), cleaned and scalded — at least half the total
• 750 g (1 lb 10 oz) pork stomach (maw), cleaned and scalded
• 250 g (9 oz) pork small intestine, cleaned
• 3–4 extra-large pieces of large intestine or beef middle, 50–60 mm, to make the outer skin (the “robe”)

DRY CURE (% of cleaned offal weight, 3,000 g)

• 84 g fine salt (2.8%)
• 7.5 g Cure #2 — 2.5 g/kg x 3 kg; Cure #2 is 6.25% sodium nitrite + 4% sodium nitrate, so 2.5 g/kg gives 156 ppm nitrite and 100 ppm nitrate ingoing
• 9 g black pepper, coarse (0.3%)
• 3 g quatre épices (0.1%)

COOKING LIQUOR

• 4 litres (1 gallon) water to cover, with 2 onions stuck with cloves, 2 carrots, bay, thyme, parsley, 10 peppercorns and 500 ml dry cider (optional)
• 1 roll butcher’s twine, cooking netting, a cold smoker and beech wood

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper

1. In the collection: chitterlings and stomach. The collection’s Andouillette (a briefing, not a formula) is the smaller French tripe sausage that is grilled, not eaten cold; the Louisiana andouilles such as Smoked Andouille Sausage share only the name.
2. Clean — the whole job: buy chitterlings and maw already cleaned and frozen if you can. Even so, turn every piece, rinse in several changes of cold water, scrape off any remaining fat and membrane, soak 2 hours in cold water with a little vinegar, rinse again, then blanch 5 minutes in boiling water and cool. Smell decides: clean tripe smells faintly of the farm, not of the gut. If it still smells, clean again. Everything after this depends on it.
3. Cut strips: cut the chaudins and stomach into strips about 2 cm (¾ in) wide and 30 cm (12 in) long — the length of the finished andouille.
4. Salt: weigh the strips, mix the salt, Cure #2 and spices into them, and pack in a covered non-reactive tub in the fridge at 2–4 °C for 3–5 days, turning daily. This is the traditional maceration; the cure is added because a home smoke stretches over weeks at temperatures where an uncured product is not safe.
5. Assemble: gather a bundle of strips lengthwise — about 1 kg — fold over a loop of twine at one end, and pull the bundle into an outer robe of large intestine or beef middle with the twine, the way Vire makers “pull” an andouille. Tie off firmly. The strips run lengthwise, which is why a slice shows an irregular mosaic.
6. Dry: hang in the fridge or a cold room at 2–8 °C for 24 hours until the surface is dry and tacky. Smoke does not take on a wet surface.
7. Cold smoke for weeks: smoke over beech at 10–18 °C (50–64 °F), never warmer, in sessions of 8–12 hours with rest periods in the cold between, over 2–4 weeks, until the skin is black-brown and the andouille has lost a quarter or more of its weight. Vire makers smoke for more than a month; a home cold smoker in winter is the only realistic way. If the surface grows fuzzy mould, smells sour, or the inside goes soft and slimy, it has failed — discard it.
8. Soak: soak in cold water for 24 hours, changing the water twice, to draw out salt and rehydrate. Skipping this gives a hard, salty andouille.
9. Cook long: wrap each in netting or cloth, put in the cold liquor, bring slowly to 90–95 °C / 194–203 °F — below a boil — and cook 5–6 hours, until a skewer slides in easily and the centre is well above 71 °C / 160 °F. Tripe needs the long cook to turn tender.
10. Cool in the liquor and press: let it cool in the liquid overnight, then drain and chill under a light weight for a day so it slices cleanly.
11. Serve cold: slice thin, with crusty bread and salted butter, cider or pommeau. Warm slices also go on mashed potatoes or into a galette.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. There is no protected-name specification for andouille de Vire. The method follows French descriptions of Vire production (the French Wikipedia article, Chef Simon’s comparison of Vire and Guémené, and Vire makers’ own process outlines): the pig’s whole digestive tract with no added fat; at least 50% chaudins in an “andouille de Vire supérieure”; strips cleaned, cut, salted and left to macerate for several days, then mounted lengthwise in a natural casing called the robe; smoked, preferably over beech, for more than a month; desalted about 24 hours; netted and cooked in water or court-bouillon about six hours at 95 °C; 25–30 cm long and 4–6 cm across. Deviations, numbered: (1) Cure #2 added at 156 ppm nitrite, because none of the French sources give a nitrite figure and a home smoke of weeks needs one; (2) the smoke is shortened to 2–4 weeks and held below 18 °C; (3) the seasoning is a guess — makers do not publish theirs. Untested, and genuinely difficult.

Where andouille de Vire came from. Vire, in the bocage of southern Normandy, has been the name attached to this andouille for centuries, and the French sources say the craft method “has changed little since the eighteenth century”. Its origins are placed loosely in the Middle Ages; no firm founding date is documented. It is a product of a cattle-and-pig country where nothing from the killing was thrown away, and of a cold, wet climate where long smoking was the way to keep meat. A handful of Vire charcutiers still make it by hand; a larger industry makes cheaper versions that use other offal and shorter smokes.

Vire against Guémené. Andouille de Guémené, from Brittany, is made from 20–25 chaudins of graded diameter threaded one inside another, so the slice shows concentric rings. Andouille de Vire uses strips of intestine and stomach pulled in lengthwise, so the slice is an irregular marbled mosaic. The ring pattern is the quickest way to tell them apart, and it belongs to Guémené.

The name. Andouille is usually derived from late Latin inductilis, “something led in” — a casing into which other gut has been drawn, which is exactly what the Vire method does. The same word reached Louisiana and became the name of a pork-shoulder sausage that has none of this offal in it.

Variations. Industrial andouille with more stomach and less chaudin; andouille cooked without smoke; the Breton Guémené ring andouille; the small andouillette of Troyes or Lyon, grilled hot.

Sourcing and gear. Frozen cleaned chitterlings and pork maw are sold in US groceries; buy the best cleaned grade. A cold-smoke generator (pellet maze) in a smoker kept in an unheated outbuilding in winter can hold 10–18 °C.

Still open. No Vire maker’s salting quantities or smoke schedule with temperatures have been published; whether makers use nitrite at all is not documented here.

Read more on the site. France