Boudin rouge is the red, blood version of Cajun boudin: the same pork, pork liver, rice, onion and cayenne filling as the ordinary white boudin of the Acadiana meat-market counter, bound with fresh pig’s blood, which turns it a deep crimson-brown and gives it the dense, iron-rich savour of blood sausage everywhere. It was made at the boucherie, the communal winter hog-killing, within the hour of the kill, because blood is the most perishable thing an animal gives. Today a handful of licensed Louisiana slaughterhouses and meat markets still make and sell it. It nearly disappeared, and the reason is usually told too strongly. US law does not forbid blood sausage; it requires that blood used for food come from animals inspected and passed at an official establishment. That ended the backyard supply, not the sausage. The other correction is the rice: New Orleans’ Creole blood boudin, printed in 1901, had none — the rice is Cajun. Blood must come from a licensed, inspected source. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from Marianski’s Cajun boudin, the Babineaux family’s documented method and the 1901 Picayune boudin, and it is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1,589 g / 3 lb 8 oz boneless pork shoulder, in 2 in / 5 cm chunks (70%)
- 681 g / 1 lb 8 oz pork liver, trimmed (30%)
FOR THE POT (% of meat weight)
- 227 g / 8.0 oz yellow onion, quartered (10%)
- 114 g / 4.0 oz celery (5%)
- 114 g / 4.0 oz green bell pepper (5%)
- 2 bay leaves
- 2,500 ml / 2½ qt water, to cover
RICE AND BLOOD (% of meat weight)
- 340 g / 12.0 oz long-grain white rice, raw (cooks to about 1 kg) (15%)
- 681 g / 1 lb 8 oz fresh pork blood, with anticoagulant, licensed source — about 650 ml / 22 fl oz (30%)
SEASONING (% of meat weight)
- 50 g / 1.8 oz fine salt (2.2%)
- 11 g black pepper, cracked (0.5%)
- 9.1 g cayenne (0.4%)
- 2.3 g white pepper (0.1%)
- 1.1 g allspice, ground (0.05%)
- 18 g garlic, minced (0.8%)
- 136 g / 4.8 oz green onions, sliced (6%)
- 45 g / 1.6 oz flat-leaf parsley, chopped (2%)
- 32–36 mm natural hog casing, about 12 ft / 3.7 m, tied in 8 in / 20 cm links
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: Black Pepper, cayenne and the Cajun Seasoning family of flavours. The white boudin this is built on is in the collection as Boudin Blanc - 1 and Noudin — both are Cajun rice boudin despite the French name.
- Blood first — the safety step: buy blood from a licensed, inspected source, treated with anticoagulant. Federal law (9 CFR 310.20) permits blood to be saved for food only at an official establishment, from animals whose carcasses were inspected and passed. Keep it at or below 38 °F / 3 °C, strain it, and use within 48 hours of collection. The Babineaux family’s method mixes salt into the fresh blood at the kill to keep it from clotting; bought blood has already been treated.
- Cook the meats: put the pork, liver, onion, celery, bell pepper and bay in a pot, cover with the water, and simmer until the pork is fork-tender, about 1½ hours. Lift out the solids, discard the bay, and keep the stock — Marianski calls the stock the most important ingredient in boudin, and it is: it carries the flavour into the rice.
- Cook the rice in the stock: cook the rice in about 3 cups / 720 ml of the strained stock until just tender. Slightly underdone is better than mushy — it will cook again in the casing.
- Grind and mix: grind the cooked meats and vegetables through a 6 mm (1/4 in) plate. Mix with the rice, salt, peppers, cayenne, allspice, garlic, green onions and parsley, adding stock until it is moist and spoonable. Taste now, before the blood: it should be loud — hot, salty, peppery. The blood will mute it.
- Cool, then add the blood: spread the mix out and let it cool below 90 °F / 32 °C, then stir in the cold blood until the whole mass is an even dark red. Blood added to a hot mix cooks in the bowl into grey grains. The mix should be soft and wet.
- Stuff loosely: stuff into the hog casing without packing it tight and tie into 8 in / 20 cm links. A loose link has room to swell as the blood sets; a tight one bursts.
- Poach, never boil: lower the links into water at 170–180 °F / 77–82 °C and hold it there 20–30 minutes, until the centre reaches 160 °F / 71 °C and a needle prick draws no red liquid. The 1901 Picayune says the same thing in its own words: never let them boil, “as that would curdle the blood”.
- Serve or chill: eat hot, squeezed from the casing onto crackers or bread, as boudin is eaten at the counter. Or chill in iced water, refrigerate up to 4 days, and reheat by steaming, or on a grill over low heat until hot through.
- Sibling recipes: the Mexican blood sausage is Moronga (Mexican Blood Sausage); the French one is Boudin Noir (French Blood Sausage).
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The white-boudin base is Marianski’s Cajun “Boudin” (70% pork butt, 30% pork liver; simmered with onion, celery, bay and peppercorns; rice cooked in the stock at about 150 g raw per kg of meat; 1.8% salt; cracked black pepper; thyme; cayenne; green onion and parsley; 32–36 mm hog). The blood method follows the Southern Foodways Alliance’s documentation of red boudin at Babineaux’s Slaughter House in Breaux Bridge (fresh blood with salt against clotting, cooked rice, ground pork, onions, stock, seasonings, natural casing) and the 1901 Picayune Creole Cook Book’s rule to poach below a boil. Deviations: (1) blood at 30% of the meat weight is a judgement — no red-boudin blood proportion is in print; (2) salt is raised to 2.2% because the rice and blood dilute it; (3) a little allspice is added, the one spice the 1901 Creole boudin names that Cajun boudin usually lacks; (4) thyme is dropped in favour of the bell pepper of the Cajun trinity. Untested.
The law, stated accurately. The dive says boudin rouge nearly vanished because “once you can’t legally collect and sell fresh blood, you can’t make boudin rouge, full stop.” That is too strong. 9 CFR 310.20 says blood “may be saved for edible purposes at official establishments” provided it comes from livestock inspected and passed, that it is collected and handled so it is not adulterated, and that “the defibrination of blood intended for human food purposes shall not be done with the hands.” Licensed makers — Babineaux’s in Breaux Bridge, Bourgeois Meat Market in Thibodaux, Plaisance in the Lockport area are named in coverage — make and sell it. What the rule ended was blood caught at an uninspected backyard boucherie going into commerce. A Louisiana state ban on blood sausage is repeated online with no statute cited.
The rice correction. The Picayune Creole Cook Book (1901; read in the 1916 printing, p. 72) prints “Boudins … blood sausages … much affected by the Creoles”: a pint of hog or beef blood, half a pound of hog fat, two onions, garlic, allspice, mace, clove and nutmeg, fine herbs and cayenne, poached until a needle draws no blood, then fried in lard. No rice. Rice belongs to the Cajun boudin of the prairies and bayous, which the dive dates in print to 1939.
The name. Boudin rouge (red) against boudin blanc (white) is a Cajun distinction between the rice boudin with blood and without it, and has nothing to do with the French boudin blanc of milk and white meat. The collection’s Boudin Blanc - 1, Boudin Blanc - 2 and Noudin are all Cajun rice boudin.
Variations. Some makers use less rice and more blood for a darker, denser link; some add a little pork fat back in for richness. The 1901 Creole version is effectively a French boudin noir with cayenne.
Sourcing and gear. Frozen pork blood from an inspected plant via a meat processor or an Asian, Latin or Polish butcher. Pork liver from the same places. A thermometer in the poaching water.
Still open. No commercial maker’s proportion of blood to rice has been published. The SFA’s audio interview with Rodney Babineaux may hold the family’s proportions.
The photo. No open-licensed photograph of boudin rouge exists; the photograph shows Cajun rice boudin for sale in Baton Rouge, its everyday sibling.
Read more on the site. Cajun and Creole