Botifarra negra is the black member of the Catalan botifarra family: a fat, dark, sliceable sausage of cooked pork head meat, jowl and rind bound with pig’s blood and seasoned with black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove, poached in its casing and then eaten grilled, fried, in a pot of white beans, or in the Christmas escudella.
The diagnostic detail is that the meat is cooked before it is stuffed. Unlike a fresh botifarra, which is raw pork, and unlike Burgos morcilla, which has no meat at all, botifarra negra is mostly cooked meat and rind, with just enough blood to bind and blacken it; the rind’s gelatin gives the slice its firm, smooth set. It was the last sausage made at the pig-killing, using up blood and connective tissue, and the Catalan product inventory notes that poor households made it with little more than blood, rind and bread.
Use blood from a licensed source and cook to temperature. I have not made this one yet; it is built from Marianski’s butifarra negra and the Catalan product descriptions, and it is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT, COOKED (about 2,000 g), % of cooked meat
- 900 g (2 lb) pork jowl and head meat, cooked and diced — 45%
- 400 g (14 oz) pork shoulder or heart, cooked and diced — 20%
- 300 g (10½ oz) pork belly, cooked and diced — 15%
- 200 g (7 oz) pork skin, cooked until soft — 10%
- 200 g (7 oz) pork back fat, cut in 6 mm dice — 10%
BINDER
- 450 ml (scant 2 cups) fresh pork blood, from a licensed source
- 80 g (3 oz) onion, finely chopped and softened in 1 Tbsp olive oil
SEASONING (% of cooked meat weight)
- 36 g fine salt (1.8%)
- 4 g ground black pepper (0.2%)
- 2 g ground cinnamon (0.1%)
- 2 g ground nutmeg (0.1%)
- 0.6 g ground cloves (0.03%)
CASING
- 36–40 mm hog casing, tied in 30 cm loops
Directions
Key ingredients
Black Pepper · Cinnamon · Olive Oil
- In the collection: rind and blood. The plain-pork sibling is Botifarra Crua (Catalan Fresh Sausage); the meatless Spanish cousin is Morcilla de Burgos.
- Cook the meats: simmer jowl, head meat, shoulder or heart, belly and skin in salted water (10 g per litre) for 1½ hours, until the skin is soft enough to pinch through. Drop the back fat in for the last 5 minutes only. Cooking first is what makes this a firm, sliceable sausage rather than a crumbly one.
- Cut while warm: skin through a 3 mm plate (it becomes the glue); everything else diced by hand or through a 10 mm plate. Keep the back fat as visible dice.
- Mix warm: at about 40 °C combine meats, onion, salt and spices, then pour in the whisked blood and stir until every piece is dark. Warm meat takes the blood evenly; cold meat leaves it pooling.
- Taste: poach a teaspoon in a ramekin in the microwave, 20 seconds. Adjust salt and spice now.
- Fill: into the casing, firmly but leaving room to expand; tie 30 cm loops.
- Poach: in water at 80–85 °C (176–185 °F), never boiling, 35–40 minutes. Prick one: clear juice, no red, and 71 °C (160 °F) at the centre.
- Cool and dry: into cold water 10 minutes, then hang 30 minutes to steam dry before refrigerating. Keeps 5 days; freezes well.
- Serve: sliced and grilled; crumbled into white beans (mongetes) with garlic and parsley; or in escudella i carn d’olla.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Backbone: Marianski’s butifarra negra — 40% pork butt, heart and trimmings, 20% jowl and belly, 10% back fat, 5% liver, 10% skins cooked and ground at 3 mm, 15% blood; 1.8% salt, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, fried onion; 36 mm hog casing; cooked in water at 80 °C for 35 minutes. The Catalan product inventory (Gastroteca.cat) lists head meat, feet, kidneys, hearts, jowl, rinds and blood, sometimes bread as thickener, and records that richer households used fatty meats while poorer ones used mostly blood, rind and bread. Deviations: (1) all meats pre-cooked, following Catalan practice, where Marianski grinds most raw; (2) liver dropped; (3) head meat given its traditional place; (4) a core temperature stated. Untested.
Where botifarra negra came from. Catalonia, all four provinces — a pig-killing (matança) sausage made last, from blood and the leftover connective tissue. Botifarra is the family name; the family includes raw botifarra (crua, vermella), white botifarra (blanca, cooked, no blood), botifarra d’ou (with egg, for Dijous Gras) and botifarra d’arròs. The Balearic botifarró is a separate blood sausage with onion and anise or pine nuts. Cuban and Puerto Rican butifarra mostly descends from the white one.
The name. Botifarra is often traced to Latin botulus (sausage), the same root as botulism; the derivation is plausible and widely repeated, not proven.
Variations. Botifarra negra with bread: replace 150 g of the meat with stale bread soaked in a little of the cooking broth (the poorer-household version). Bisbe (‘bishop’): the same mix in a wide stomach casing, sliced cold. Some makers add a few pine nuts.
Why pre-cook the meat. Raw meat stuffed with blood sets unevenly: the blood cooks long before thick pieces of jowl or skin are tender, so the slice ends up with hard rind in a crumbly matrix. Cooking the meats first means the poach only has to set the blood and reach temperature, which is why the Catalan versions are firm and smooth when sliced.
Sourcing and gear. Pork jowl, skin and blood from an Asian or Hispanic butcher. A 3 mm plate for the skin. A thermometer in the poaching water.
Still open. No Catalan quality mark or specification with ingredient percentages was found; the inventory describes but does not quantify.
Read more on the site. The Caribbean