How to cook black pudding

In France it’s called “boudin noir” and in Spain it’s called “morcilla” but for me (an Englishman from the north of England) it will always be blood sausage. Traditionally from the North of England, it’s effectively a mixture of onions, pork fat, oatmeal and pig’s blood, a classic example of a product designed to exhaust every last bit of the animal, something we don’t do enough of. of these days

It’s sad that over the years the product has been trivialized by the “Ecky Thump” image portrayed by The Goodies in the 1970s and then confined to the food junk heap along with tripe and other offal. – Okay, I’m not a big fan of guts!

In recent years, blood sausage has undergone something of a renaissance as many top chefs have rediscovered it as an ingredient and also as something to prepare just the way it is. Supermarkets have now started stocking it again, so maybe it will become a British staple again? I love it, my family does too, and if you feel like trying it, these are my favorite ways to cook it.

The black pudding comes in two basic forms, a stick, wrapped in a plastic skin, and a ring or horseshoe that goes into a natural casing like a sausage.

The stick is most commonly seen on the breakfast plate and is very easy to cook as part of the great traditional English breakfast. Cut the stick into ½-inch slices, remove the plastic skin, and grill or fry for about 5 to 10 minutes on each side. You’ll know when it’s done because the surface will have turned from a slightly brown color to a deep black and, texture-wise, it will be slightly crispy.

That’s about it if you’re going to serve it on your breakfast plate, though baked beans to top it off are perfect, as is a nice runny egg yolk. However, if you are going to have it as an aperitif, the rule of thumb is to make sure you serve it with something sweet. Caramelized onions work well, as does caramelized apple, I’ve also tried honey and chili, but to be fair, you can even get away with a simple homemade tomato ketchup.

The ring again is a simple cooking process, but few people are familiar with it. You don’t remove the skin, you just put it in boiling water (just below 100ºC) and let the ring heat up for about 10 minutes.

You want to make sure you have a pan that is about twice the size of the blood sausage ring because as the sausage heats up it will expand quite a bit and that’s a good test for when it’s cooked. Also notice that the skin color has become more gray than black.

Serving a boiled black pudding to me is cutting the skin and peeling it off, leaving the contents inside like a big black sausage on your plate. Again, I like to serve with baked beans, but try sprinkling a little white wine vinegar on the black pudding, yum!