Boutefas (Vaud Smoked Caecum Sausage)

Boutefas is the giant of western Swiss charcuterie: coarse pork and fat seasoned like a saucisson vaudois, stuffed into a pig’s caecum — the blind end of the large intestine, closed by nature at one end and tied with string at the other — then cold-smoked and slowly poached. A single boutefas weighs from 600 g to 3 kg and has a pear or bladder shape with ridges from the gut. That casing is the diagnostic; the meat is close to its sister, the saucisson vaudois. It is a festive sausage of the cantons of Vaud and Fribourg, carved at the table for the autumn Bénichon feast and for winter family dinners, and it is one of the first two Swiss meat products to win an AOP, in 2021, alongside the Jambon de la Borne. The AOP requires at least 65% lean, at most 35% fat, a 5–8 mm grain, a natural pork caecum, and a cold smoke of at least 48 hours with no chemical colouring. In the US the caecum is sold as a hog “bung cap”, so the casing is gettable. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from the Boutefas AOP rules and Swiss heritage descriptions, and is untested.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight

• 1476 g (3 lb 4 oz) lean pork, shoulder and ham trimmings (AOP at least 65% lean) — 65%
• 794 g (1 lb 12 oz) pork back fat and belly fat (AOP at most 35%) — 35%

CURE AND SEASONING (% of meat weight)

• 5.7 g Cure #1 (pink salt, 6.25% sodium nitrite) — 2.5 g/kg x 2.27 kg = 5.7 g; 2.5 g/kg x 6.25% = 156 ppm ingoing nitrite, the USDA ceiling for comminuted products
• 50 g fine salt (in addition to the cure) (2.2%)
• 6.8 g sugar (0.3%)
• 6.8 g black pepper, coarsely cracked (0.3%)
• 5.7 g garlic, crushed (0.25%)
• 2.3 g ground coriander (0.1%)
• 57 g dry white wine (2.5%)
• 2–3 hog bung caps (caecum), cleaned, or 1 large one; butcher’s twine and a trussing needle

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper

1. In the collection: the caecum and patience. The same paste in an ordinary casing is Saucisson Vaudois (Smoked Vaud Sausage).
2. Prepare the caecum: soak the bung caps in several changes of cold water, turn them, rinse well and check for holes by filling with water. Small holes can be sewn closed with twine; a leak in the smoke is a split in the pot.
3. Grind: chill meat and fat to near freezing and grind through an 8 mm plate, or 6 mm for some of the lean. The AOP grain is 5–8 mm: coarse enough to see meat and fat in the slice.
4. Mix: dissolve the cure, salt and sugar in the wine, add with the spices and mix until sticky, 2–3 minutes.
5. Taste: fry a spoonful to 71 °C and adjust the salt.
6. Stuff: fill each caecum firmly by hand or with the widest stuffing tube, working out every air pocket. Tie the open end tightly with a double knot and leave a loop for hanging. Weigh each one and write it down — cooking time depends on it.
7. Dry and redden: hang at 10–15 °C / 50–59 °F for 24 hours until the surface is dry and the colour has turned pink.
8. Cold smoke 48 hours: smoke with hardwood or conifer sawdust (the AOP allows conifer, hardwood or a mix) at 18–22 °C / 64–72 °F — the AOP range is 18–28 °C, and the lower half is safer at home — for at least 48 hours in sessions, until mahogany. Cool and dry between sessions.
9. Store: refrigerate as raw meat, up to two weeks, or freeze.
10. Poach slowly: put the boutefas in a deep pot of cold water, bring it to 75–80 °C / 167–176 °F — the water should shiver, never boil — and hold it there until the centre reaches 71 °C / 160 °F: roughly 1½ hours for 1 kg, 2½–3 hours for 2–3 kg. Check with a probe through the tied end. Let it cool for 20 minutes in its liquor, which keeps it juicy.
11. Serve: carve in thick slices at the table, with papet vaudois, potato gratin, or a Bénichon mustard.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The rules are from the Boutefas AOP specification as summarised by the producers’ association and the Swiss culinary heritage inventory: production in the cantons of Vaud and Fribourg (except the Sense/Singine district) and the Bernese enclave of Villars-les-Moines; pork with at least 65% lean and at most 35% fat; grain 5–8 mm; carcasses of at least 80 kg; stuffed only into natural pork caecum, one end naturally closed and the other tied with string; cold-smoked at 18–28 °C with conifer, hardwood or mixed sawdust or logs, with reddening and smoking lasting at least 48 hours; no chemical colouring; weights from 600 g to 3 kg; cooked in simmering, never boiling, water and left to cool in its juice. Permitted seasonings for this family (salt, pepper, sugar, garlic, coriander, white wine, wine lees) come from the heritage inventory. Deviations: (1) the AOP sources give no nitrite figure; Cure #1 at 156 ppm is added because the sausage sits two days at room temperature in smoke; (2) smoke held at the lower end of the range; (3) final temperature 71 °C. Untested.

Where boutefas came from. The heritage inventory cites the earliest known reference in a 1634 Thurnrodel in the Fribourg State Archives. It was a farm sausage made at the winter pig-killing, the caecum being one of the few casings big enough to hold a family’s worth of meat in one piece. It is associated with the Bénichon, the autumn harvest-and-thanksgiving feast of the Fribourg countryside, and with Vaud’s winter tables. In 2021 Boutefas and Jambon de la Borne became the first Swiss meat products registered as AOP.

The name. Unclear. The heritage inventory suggests a possible origin in Latin buttis, barrel, and fars, stuffing — “a stuffed barrel” — but calls the etymology uncertain.

Variations. Smaller boutefas for two; versions with more garlic; boutefas cooked in the embers of a fire wrapped in foil, the torée.

Sourcing and gear. Hog bung caps are sold by US sausage suppliers as “hog bung caps” or “hog caps”. A long probe thermometer matters more here than anywhere: the centre of a 2 kg boutefas lags far behind the water.

Still open. The full AOP cahier des charges (salt range, smoke duration upper limit) has not been read in the original; makers’ spice weights are not published.

Read more on the site. The German Tradition