Any time spent on the grinder/extruder is time well spent.

We’ve been working on our handmade sausage recipes and techniques for almost a year now. We’ve made Texas hot guts, pure pork, Sweet Italian, Polish and a few experimental-style sausages during this time.

The subject of boudin has come up periodically when we’ve been wool gathering and/or bragging amongst ourselves about how good a job we’re doing, but we’d never tackled the legend.

Til now. When we planned our most recent Scrumptious Chef Pop Up restaurant we knew the theme was going to be Cajun so it was mandatory that handmade boudin be on the menu.

Time to get in touch with Johnson’s Boucaniere over in Lafayette and see how the masters go about the art.

We neither asked for nor received an official recipe. We were more interested in technique than anything else. Since Johnson’s recipe is a 70 year family tradition we reckoned they wouldn’t be parting with it anyhow.

It’s how they keep the bills paid.

Here’s our guide to making the best boudin you will ever put in your mouth

Recipe:

Ingredients

4 c. Rice, medium grain

7.5 c. Stock, pork (recipe)

6 bunches Onion, green, tops only, chopped finely

3 lbs Pork belly, roasted, finely chopped

12 oz Liver, pork, cooked and finely chopped

8 each Intestines, pig, soaked in hot water

Salt

Pepper, black

Pepper, cayenne

Method

* bring stock to boil

* Add rice, cook according to package directions

* Blend hot rice with onion tops, pork belly, and liver, season heavily with salt and peppers

* Thread intestine onto extruder, tie knot in end, feed rice mixture into feeder funnel at top of machine, as stuffed intestine reaches 6″ in length, spin it to form sausage shape, continue til intestine reaches end

* Repeat til intestines are depleted

Voila. You now have a batch of handmade boudin. This batch size makes 36 sausages, each roughly 6″ long

tasting notes: by using such a small amount of liver the offal flavor was minimal. Personally we love the stuff but we were making this batch for a crowd so we democratized the recipe.

By cutting down on the moisture in the rice you help to maintain the integrity of the kernel.

You could use pork shoulder instead of belly but we chose belly so the links would be juicy with fat.

This is a boudin template, you could branch out in all sorts of directions: make a crawfish boudin, a beef boudin or a chicken boudin for instance.

Several eaters at the food party remarked that this was the best boudin they ever ate. Bear in mind these men are seasoned veterans of the meat markets of Western Louisiana.

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