Food

Stornoway-Style Black Pudding

Beef · Breakfast · British · Offal · Sausage

Stornoway-Style Black Pudding
Prep 45 minutes
Cook 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours
Serves About 2.5 kg / 5.5 lb — three puddings 60 mm across, or two loaf tins
Level Medium

Stornoway black pudding, from the main town of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, is the British black pudding with the shortest ingredient list in law: beef suet, oatmeal, onion, blood, salt and pepper, and nothing else. No rusk, no pork fat, no spices beyond pepper, no colours or preservatives. Its PGI, granted in 2013, does not ban rusk by name; it simply lists what is allowed and stops there. The result is the diagnostic: a pudding that is mostly suet and oats with blood as the binder and colour, so it cooks up dark, moist and oaty and breaks apart when cut rather than crumbling. It comes from crofting households that killed a sheep, a cow or a pig and used every part, with the guts cleaned in seawater for skins; island butchers have sold puddings under the Stornoway name since 1931. Only puddings made in the Stornoway Trust area may carry the name, so this is a home pudding built to the PGI’s own percentages. Blood must come from a licensed, inspected source. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from the PGI specification and is untested.

Ingredients

PUDDING (2,500 g / 5.5 lb), % of total mix

  • 1,000 g (2 lb 3 oz) beef suet, fresh, membrane removed — 40% (PGI 37–50%)
  • 450 g (1 lb) medium Scottish oatmeal, raw — 18% (PGI 16–20%)
  • 400 g (14 oz) onion, finely chopped, raw — 16% (PGI 15–18%)
  • 600 ml (2½ cups) fresh pig, beef or sheep blood, one species only — 24% (PGI 12–26%)
  • 30 g (5 tsp) fine salt — 1.2% (PGI 0.6–2%)
  • 20 g (3 Tbsp) black pepper, fine — 0.8% (PGI 0.4–2%)
  • 120 g dried blood powder in 480 ml water may replace the 600 ml fresh blood (check the maker’s ratio)
  • 60 mm fibrous or cellulose casing, 3 x 30 cm (12 in) lengths, or 2 loaf tins 23 x 13 cm (9 x 5 in)

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper

  1. In the collection: blood, beef suet and oatmeal. The collection’s Irish Black Pudding is the pork-fat-and-oats Irish version; Blutwurst mit Graupen (German Blood Sausage with Barley) and Boudin Noir (French Blood Sausage) show other countries’ answers.
  2. Chop the suet fine: remove skin and membrane and chop the cold suet to 1–5 mm pieces — the PGI’s own figure — in a food processor with short pulses, or grate it frozen. Fine suet melts evenly and leaves the small, visible fat flecks the spec describes; lumps become greasy pockets.
  3. Mix dry first: combine suet, oatmeal, onion, salt and pepper by hand. The spec mixes the dry ingredients first, then the liquid, and that order keeps the suet coated in oats rather than clumping in the blood.
  4. Add the blood: strain the blood through a fine sieve to remove clots, then stir it in until the mixture is “a thick porridge-like consistency, which can still be stirred but with some effort”, as the spec puts it. Too stiff and the pudding is dry; too loose and the oats sink and the top is all fat.
  5. Taste — cooked only: raw blood must not be tasted. Poach a spoonful in a small cup of simmering water for 5 minutes, then taste for salt and pepper. It should be savoury and well peppered but not spicy.
  6. Fill: fill the casings about three-quarters full (the oats swell), tie off and prick air pockets; or pack the tins three-quarters full and cover with greased foil.
  7. Cook below the boil: poach the casings in water held at 75–80 °C / 167–176 °F for about 1½ hours, or bake the tins in a water bath at 150 °C / 300 °F, until the centre reads 71 °C / 160 °F and stays there for a minute. The PGI allows 70–86 °C for up to 2½ hours; boiling bursts casings and fries the fat out.
  8. Cool and chill: hang the puddings to cool, then refrigerate overnight at 2–4 °C. They keep about a week in the fridge and freeze well.
  9. Serve: slice 1–1.5 cm thick and fry or grill 2–3 minutes a side until the edges crisp. With scallops, eggs or in a breakfast roll.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The only source is the PGI specification (“Stornoway Black Pudding”, Regulation 510/2006, registered 2013), read in full. It fixes the ingredients and ranges — beef suet 37–50%, oatmeal 16–20%, onion 15–18%, blood (sheep, cow or pig) 12–26%, salt 0.6–2%, pepper 0.4–2% — but each butcher keeps a private recipe within them. The figures here sit near the middle of each range and sum to 100%. Deviation: the cooking is set to reach 71 °C internal, inside the spec’s 70–86 °C window. Untested.

What the PGI says. Ingredients are a closed list: “Beef suet, oatmeal, onion, blood (with the addition of water where dried blood is used), salt, and pepper.” “No other seasonings are permitted” and the pudding must be “free from artificial colours, flavours, bulking agents and preservatives.” Blood from only one species per batch. Suet hand-cleaned and bowl-cut to about 1–5 mm. Skins natural or synthetic, 52–72 mm across, 150–500 mm long, 0.5–1.36 kg. Boiled or steamed for up to 2.5 hours at 70–86 °C, cooled hanging, stored at 2 °C, about one month’s shelf life. The production area is Stornoway and the surrounding Stornoway Trust land.

Where Stornoway black pudding came from. The specification ties it to crofting, the small-tenancy farming of the Hebrides, where neighbours shared the killing of a sheep, pig or cow and the meat. The Gaelic is marag dubh, black pudding. The intestines were cleaned in seawater and soaked in brine before scraping, and one set of guts made at least five puddings, each part with its own name. Without electricity, finished puddings were stored in chests of oatmeal to keep dry. Some of the town’s butchers have been making and selling puddings under the Stornoway name since 1931. The PGI was sought because puddings made elsewhere were using the name. The island abattoir now runs only from mid-August to January, so most blood and skins come from the mainland and dried blood is permitted.

Why it stands apart. Most British black puddings are pig’s blood and pork fat with rusk, barley or both, and spiced with mace, coriander or pennyroyal. Stornoway’s suet-and-oats build gives a softer, oatier, less greasy pudding with pepper as the only spice.

Variations. Sheep’s blood is the old island choice; pig’s and beef blood are both allowed. Some makers chop the onion coarser for texture. Sizes vary from slices to the 1.36 kg log.

Sourcing and gear. In the US, frozen pig’s blood is sold in Asian groceries and by some farm butchers; buy it from an inspected source and keep it frozen until the day. Blood powder from sausage suppliers is a legitimate alternative under the spec. Medium or pinhead Scottish oatmeal, not rolled oats.

Still open. No Stornoway butcher’s actual weights have been published; this formula is placed inside the legal ranges, not copied from a maker.

The photo. The photograph is a slice of genuine Stornoway Black Pudding, made on Lewis; a pudding made anywhere else may not use the name.

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