Boudin Blanc

As a lover of haggis, and one who has made his own from scratch, I'm no stranger to organ meats stuffed into digestive tracts and cooked up for dinner. While perusing the odd meats corner of the local grocery store (which is a great place to hear a lot of different obscure languages and where I've held court explaining how to cook oxtails), I spied a pack of Tony Chachere's Pork Boudin.

Boudin isn't really rare or exotic, but might not be recognizable to many. We're talking here about the Louisiana style boudin blanc, a combination of pork meat, heart, and liver combined with rice and spices. The classic French sausage of the same name is a very different beast. What I did was poke a few holes in the boudin, steam it, and then seared it off in a skillet to provide for the ideal crispy skin. I served it with some sauerkraut and fresh tomatoes--perhaps more German than N'Awlins, but it seemed like a good fit.

The first thing you need to know is that boudin is more like stuffing than sausage, in that there's a lot of starchy filler. But the heart and liver really add a lot of powerful flavor, so it's far from bland. It worked out well with my sides, although you might want to throw in a few slices of grilled andouille to round things out.