Black Pudding, Irish

Blood, hard fat, pinhead oatmeal, onion and pepper, set in a loaf pan rather than a casing. The cereal is what makes it Irish rather than French or Spanish - continental blood sausage is blood and fat with little grain. Made with frozen pig blood from an Asian market; the loaf-pan method skips the stuffer entirely, because blood sausage sets on its own as the blood proteins coagulate.

Ingredients

• 600 g pig’s blood (or beef blood), thawed and strained
• 300 g pork back fat or beef suet, diced 6 mm - do NOT grind
• 220 g pinhead (steel-cut) oatmeal, dry weight
• 300 ml whole milk or stock, for soaking the oats
• 150 g onion, finely diced, sweated soft and COOLED COMPLETELY
• 22 g fine sea salt (about 1.6%)
• 4 g white pepper, ground
• 1.5 g ground mace
• 1.5 g ground allspice
• 1 g dried thyme
• 1 g dried marjoram

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper · Salt

1. Soak the oats. Warm the milk to lukewarm and pour it over the pinhead oats. Stand 30-60 minutes, or overnight in the fridge. They should be hydrated but still granular. Rolled oats go pasty - pinhead is the correct choice and it matters.
2. Sweat and COOL the onions. Cook the diced onion gently in a little fat until soft, then chill it to fridge temperature. This is the step that catches people: hot onion begins coagulating the blood in the mixing bowl and you get grainy pudding.
3. Strain the blood through a fine sieve. Thawed blood always clots and the clots give a nasty texture. Keep it cold throughout - no warmer than 2 C / 35 F.
4. Mix. Combine the blood, the soaked oats with any unabsorbed liquid, the diced fat, the cooled onion, salt and spices. Mix thoroughly but do not whip air into it.
5. Pan it. Grease a 9x5 in (23x13 cm) loaf pan and line it with parchment, leaving an overhang. Fill and tap down to knock out voids.
6. Bain-marie. Set the loaf pan in a roasting tray and pour hot water into the tray to reach halfway up the outside of the loaf pan.
7. Cook low: 160 C / 325 F for 75-90 minutes, to an internal temperature of 72 C / 160 F. Do not let the water bath boil. Blood curdles above a gentle poach - this is the single most common failure and it cannot be undone.
8. Chill hard. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate at least overnight. It must be cold and fully set before it will slice. This is not optional - warm pudding crumbles apart in the pan.
9. Then slice about 1 cm thick and fry in a little fat, 2-3 minutes a side, until crusted. The pudding is already cooked; frying is a reheat-and-crust step, not the cook.

Notes

Casing variant

If you have casings: stuff LOOSELY into 36-40 mm hog casings - loose, because the oats swell and tight casings burst. Tie with butcher’s twine rather than twisting (twisted links fall out with blood sausage). Poach at 80 C / 176 F for about 40 min to 72 C internal. Prick any that float. Do not raise the temperature to hurry it or the casings burst.

Sourcing the blood

Asian and Latino markets, frozen - that is the reliable route and it is where mine came from. Online Asian grocers ship it frozen; a butcher will often order it with a week’s notice. Pig blood is legal to buy and sell in the US; there is no federal ban on blood as a food ingredient. Food-purpose blood should come from a USDA-inspected source. NOTE: I could not locate a specific FSIS regulation governing edible blood collection for retail, and did not verify state-by-state rules including Michigan’s. The principle is sound; the citation is missing. Ask your state ag department if you are doing anything beyond cooking for yourself.

Safety

Cook thoroughly to 72 C / 160 F. Blood is a superb bacterial growth medium - it is literally culture broth. Never eat it raw. Do not refreeze thawed blood. Never boil.

Pork blood vs beef blood

Pork blood solidifies and stays moist; beef blood becomes crumbly and dry. This likely explains Clonakilty’s characteristically crumbly slice - it is a beef-blood pudding. If you substitute beef blood into this formula, expect a drier result and consider raising the fat slightly.

Honesty label

This is a reasoned formula built from sourced anchors (Marianski’s traditional structure, re-cereal’d to oatmeal for the Irish profile and rebalanced toward a higher blood fraction; poaching temps from Marianski and Hank Shaw). It is not a transcription of a tested house recipe. Treat it as a strong starting point, not scripture.

Not a superfood

The 2016 “black pudding is a superfood” wave came from an online retailer analysing search queries on its own website. Roughly 300 kcal and 21.5 g fat per 100 g. Delicious, genuinely iron-rich, and a treat. Not health food.

Full story: White Pudding, Irish is the sibling. See also Irish Breakfast, The Full.