How to Make Blood Sausage

This is how we make blood sausage at Atitlan Organics. We do it when we harvest a goat or a pig but really, you could do it with just about any animal. This video's about a year old and our process is always evolving. We were just in Scotland and tried haggis--dang, it's good! Anyone have any good haggis recipes? That may well be our next iteration of blood sausage.



We've got lots more knowledge sharing on our Atitlan Organics blog here. Have a good one! -Colleen

blood sausage used to be very popular in this area and still is with my fathers generation. its still made and sold in the grocery stores around here. its a acquired taste . i remember my great uncle on the family farm harvesting the blood from live pigs hanging upside down. im not squeamish but that left a bad impression on me. the french acadian way was to bleed the animal alive by cutting its throat. they said you got more blood and the meat was better. after hearing the pigs slowly die , it turned me off to boudain, french for blood sausage.

The Polish version adds buckwheat groats. I grew up on that particular version, but I would love to try others.

As to the live bleeding, I understand the case for it, but am not entirely sanguine about the notion (see what I did there...?).

I mean, yes, these animals are equipped with tiny, tasty little pumps that are exquisitely well-suited to carrying out the task of accelerating the bleeding-out process, meaning no pooling, and no ruined meat. I think that if there was some natural sedative I could feed the animal in question prior to the act of bleeding it, such that it would be largely unaware of the process, that would probably make it even more painless than a sharp blow to the skull or sudden decapitation, say.

I had a "but" to add, but I think I changed my mind halfway through the last paragraph. I think that, if the animals to be killed have lived the best life they could possibly have, to have only one bad day at the end, if they end up stoned and oblivious such that they don't even feel it, isn't that even better than a blow to the skull?

And yes, thinking about it, I think something like a cannabis extract would be really the only thing that I wouldn't worry about giving to an animal so close to slaughter. So I have to keep the organ meats for myself...

-CK

Chris Kott wrote:The Polish version adds buckwheat groats. I grew up on that particular version, but I would love to try others.

The Ladakhi (Buddhist) version uses barley flour. Ladakhi Muslims, of course, don't make blood sausage, but they do make some kind of sausage and use buckwheat flour (or groats? I think it's just the flour. I've only been told, haven't tasted it myself).

Strangely, though in everything else Ladakhis have adopted the range of North India spices, the blood sausages are very plain and bland, but they sure do give a woman that yummy feeling of eating something VERY nutritious!

steve bossie wrote:the french acadian way was to bleed the animal alive by cutting its throat. they said you got more blood and the meat was better. after hearing the pigs slowly die , it turned me off to boudain, french for blood sausage.

When I was at the University of Illinois I used to collect fresh pig's blood for immunology research.  They had a device that was like a defibrillator, you put one paddle on the forehead and the other on the side of the head under the ear, and when the button was pushed all the legs would go stiff and the pig would fall over, out cold.

Then a chain was placed around a rear leg and the pig was hauled up so that it hung head down.  The carotid arteries would be cut and the pig would bleed out, completely unconscious.  I would step up with 4-6 big collection tubes (they held 60ml and fit in the centrifuge) and just plunge my hands into that fountain of blood.  It was a little creepy, but I never felt like the pig was suffering.  In fact, it seemed a very humane way to harvest a pig.  The other pigs in the group never seemed to get upset, they could hear but couldn't see what happened. I wonder how much a device like that costs?

Well as long as the heart still beats, I guess defibrillating the brain might work, possibly even better than herbal sedation of whatever kind.

I think that anything that can be done to eliminate suffering, from making the kill process painless to ensuring the minimum chance for accidental not-killing (which could result in pain to the animal), is laudable.

And making blood sausage of whatever kind, just like making different types of sausages and charcuterie to utilise the entire carcass, is one of the most permacultural, and also respectful, types of harvest possible.

-CK