Black Pudding

We've had a few mentions of black pudding, on Permies, but I think it deserves a thread of it's own. It came up on Carla's British pie thread, as I mentioned it as an alternative to sausagemeat in a sausage pie recipe. Dave Burton tells of his black pudding adventures on this thread.

British cooked breakfast

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Traditionally cooked as part of a fried breakfast, it is a pudding made from what would otherwise be a waste product: The blood of a butchered animal. My mother would say 'it's good for girls' (plenty of iron in that blood!). It's easy to buy ready made in the UK. My favourite is Stornaway black pudding which has a light smooth texture, my husband prefers our local Skye Black pudding, which is a bit more uneven.

Skye Black Pudding

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I found a few different recipes in my cookery books (Note all units will be British Imperial not US Imperial so beware of liquid units). The oldest is from the 1930s and is a method that does not involve using a pudding skin, which may be more convenient.

from 'Farmhouse Fare' book of recipes collected by the Farmers Weekly magazine

The recipe that Lillian Beckwith gives in her "Hebridean Cookbook" from 1976 is for sheep's blood and uses either the stomach or intestines as casings. It sounds like she wasn't a particular fan though; as she says it is revolting to make and one has to be hungry to cook or eat it!
ingredients :
Stomach bag or intestines of sheep
1 quart (1 1/4 litres) sheep's blood
1/2 pint (300 ml) skimmed milk
1/2 lb (225g) medium oatmeal
1/2 lb (225g) finely chopped suet
3 teaspns pepper
2 dessertspns salt
1 teaspn dried mint
1/4 teaspn nutmeg
Wash the stomach bag or intestines very thoroughly and soak in salt water, if possible overnight.
Put the blood into a large basin; warm the milk and add.
Mix in all the other ingredients  and stir well. Fill the stomach bag three parts full (or the intestines), tie the top securely and put them in near boiling water. Bring to the boil and simmer for about one hour if using the stomach bag or half an hour if using the intestines. While they are boiling prick them occasionally with a large darning needle to let the air escape.

It looks like my local recipes are dairy free and just have oatmeal in them, but elsewhere barley, breadcrumbs and rice are all used. Similarly beef suet may be used as well as pork fat, and onions also added. Apparently you can buy dried pigs blood fairly easily from the internet (in the UK at least: blood here for example, or this black pudding mix may ship internationally.

Has anyone else tried making black pudding? If you slaughter animals, how else do you use the blood?

i’m so interested in all the different blood sausages!

our main use (mostly because it was my original frame of reference for using blood) is closely modeled on the navajo version i learned when i lived on the reservation in the late ‘90’s, which isn’t particularly ‘sausage-y’ and doesn’t have much seasoning beyond salt and pepper. cooked in the stomach.

or at just the right time every year mixing blood into bend-down bread, which is usually field corn, fresh from the field and ground wet, mixed with a little bit of fat and some salt&pepper, wrapped in the husks tamale-style and baked. the only thing different about the bloody version is the blood…

i can definitely see how a bit more spicing might make blood-based food more approachable to the uninitiated, though.