Making sausage is really fun and we’ve made a lot of it at Le Cordon Bleu. It tastes much better than the commercial kind filled with chemicals, additives, and un-identifyable meat. It’s not difficult to make if you have a meat grinder (or a butcher who will grind it for you), a plastic pastry bag, and a sausage pastry tip. The trickiest part is finding the natural casing (intestines cleaned) and pure pork fat or fatback (so it won’t dry out). After you get the basic technique down you can get really crazy with maple sausage breakfast links or fiery Italian sausage, the possibilities are endless…

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This article is for Matthew Rose who asked me how to make sausage, specifically Boudin Noir. I prefer Boudin Blanc for it’s delicate flavor and lack of blood, however, the methods are the same. The problem with Boudin Noir is finding the blood. Sometimes we get pints of it in the kitchens at LCB for specific recipes like Poulet en Barbouille – pint of pig blood anyone? Blood when it’s cooked binds ingredients together and turns a beautiful dark chocolate color, but it takes some getting used to. Here’s the technique:

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Grind all the meat and fat up together. Weigh meat and add salt and pepper to it (20g salt/ kilo meat, 4g pepper/ kilo meat). Then mix meat and all precooked & cooled ingredients together in a big bowl. Load up your pastry bag with meat filing and pastry tip and scrunch casing over the tip then tie off the end of the casing. Gently squeeze away. Make sure not to overfill so you can tie off links with cooking string. Once finished poke a few holes in casing with toothpick, especially if there’s any air bubbles. Boil for 20 minutes then fry up! Voila!

After cross referencing many different Boudin Blanc recipes they all seem to be the same with the exception of whether or not to add breadcrumbs instead of potato starch. Here’s the old tried and true standby sans breadcrumbs…

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Boudin Blanc

Ingredients
400 g pork leg, shoulder, or loin (veal or chicken can be substituted)
150 pork fatback
20g potato starch or bread crumbs
1/2 onion, finely diced cooked and cooled (not browned)
6 egg whites
80 ml whipping cream
300 ml milk cooked with an onion and the peel of 1 orange (for flavor)
bay leaf and thyme
pinch nutmeg
20g salt
3g white pepper
1 meter sausage casing
kitchen string

Cooking liquid
500 ml milk
2 litres water
30 ml orange flower water

Instructions
1. Sweat onions with just a little butter over low heat (don’t brown). Add a pinch of salt & sugar.
2. For aromatic milk simmer low (60˚C maximum) with orange peel, bay leaf, thyme, and sliced onion.
3. Mix ground meat with onions, pepper, salt, potato starch.
4. In a cuisinart or blender put meat mixture and blend in egg whites, milk, and then cream till just mixed. Don’t turn cream into butter.
5. Start cooking liquid simmering (68-70˚C)
6. Load up your pastry bag with meat filing and pastry tip and scrunch casing over the tip then tie off the end of the casing. Gently squeeze. Make sure not to overfill so you can tie off links with cooking string. Once finished poke a few holes in casing with toothpick, especially if there’s any air bubbles.
7. Poach in cooking liquid for 20 minutes. Put in ice bath to cool. Then fry up in some peanut oil until golden brown.