It may be possible to have a bad meal in Louisiana, but it hasn’t happened to me yet. Everything from shrimp out of the back of a van to the off-the-track little diners and restaurants to the palaces of New Orleans to mom-and-pop boucheries in Cajun Country, Louisiana is an eater’s paradise. Cajun boudin is not the least among the state’s culinary glories.
Louisiana boudin (boo-dan) is unlike French boudin, which is a more general term for sausages there. Cajun boudin is more like a meat stuffing packed into a hog casing and poached, grilled or smoked.
Some people eat it by squeezing out the good stuff from the casing — sometimes onto a cracker (Saltines appear to be the general cracker of choice), squirting some mustard on it and sitting on the back of your tailgate munching away and pondering the mysteries of life and sausages. Many others skip the crackers and just eat boudin like a meaty pop-up popsicle.
Boudin is a meal in a bite: Meat, fat, carbs from the rice, lots of vegetables and plenty of spice. Like dirty rice in a casing. It’s Cajun fast food.
If you are a hunter or an angler, boudin is a dish you need to know about, because Louisiana boudin can (and is) made from pretty much anything. Pork yes, but also duck (as I did in this version), venison, rabbit, alligator, chicken, crawfish, shrimp, crabs, nutria, quail, turkey… you get the point.
And since you grind everything, it’s a fantastic way to use the wobbly bits like livers, gizzards and hearts. You won’t really notice they’re in the boudin, and you get the satisfaction of a) not wasting parts of the animals you’ve hunted, and b) telling your offal-hating friends what they just ate — after they’ve eaten seconds. Or thirds.
How do you make this wondrous sausage?
I honestly had no idea until I got a chance to tour Cajun Country as the guest of the folks from Tabasco a few years ago. Among other things, they introduced me to Legnon’s Boucherie in New Iberia. Ted Legnon is famous both for his cracklins’ and his boudin, but I honestly can only eat a few crackin’s at any one time. I can eat inordinate amounts of boudin, so I focused my attention to that.
Boudin is a cooked sausage, in that everything is cooked before it’s ground up and stuffed into a casing. They’re sold in long links that are often tied into a ring and either poached and served or smoked to be eaten on the go. It’s a sloppy mixture that is only loosely stuffed into the casings — very unlike the tight stuffing you do with German sausages to get that characteristic knacken or snap.
Ratios of meat to rice vary; Legnon’s goes for a 1:1 ratio. My recipe is a little more meat-heavy.
The sausage can be mild or very spicy, with lots of vegetables (usually the “trinity” of onions, celery and green peppers) or few, red with paprika or just a humble gray. The point is that everyone makes boudin differently, and I’d be insane to claim that my recipe is definitive.
But I did learn from Legnon’s and I’ve eaten an awful lot of boudin, so I can tell you that my boudin is at least in the ballpark, even if it’s different from how your grandma or your local boucherie makes it.
If your boudin is different, how so? I’d be interested in hearing your variations.
Louisiana Boudin Sausage
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 pounds duck, venison, beef, pork, whatever
- 1/2 pounds liver
- 1/2 pound pork fat
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 2 poblano or green bell peppers, chopped
- 1 bay leaf
- 6 garlic cloves, chopped
- 4 tablespoons kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon Instacure No. 1 (optional)
- 3 to 5 tablespoons Cajun seasoning, or see below
- 2 cups cooked white rice (long-grain is best)
- 1 cup parsley, chopped
- 1 cup green onions, chopped
- Hog casings
Instructions
- Chop the meats, liver and fat into chunks that will fit in the grinder. Mix the meats, liver and fat with the onion, celery, poblano peppers and garlic, then the salt, curing salt (if using) and either the Cajun seasonings or the spice mix you made from this recipe. Put it all in a lidded container and set in the fridge at least an hour, and up to a day.
- Put the contents of the container into a large pot and pour in enough water to cover everything by an inch or two. Bring to a simmer and cook gently until everything is tender, at least 90 minutes and up to 3 hours. Strain the cooking liquid (you'll need it later) and spread the meat, fat and veggies out on a sheet pan to cool.
- When everything is cool enough to handle, grind it through the coarse die (6.5 mm) on your grinder. You can also hand chop everything.
- Put your meat mix into a large bowl and add the cooked rice, parsley and green onions. Mix well, and add up to 4 cups of the reserved cooking liquid. Mix this for 3 to 5 minutes so you make a more cohesive mixture to stuff into a casing. You now have boudin.
- You can just shape the mixture into balls and fry them (they're awesome), or use your boudin as stuffing for something else, like a turkey. Or you can case it. Stuff the boudin into hog casings, and while you're doing it, get a large pot of salted water hot -- not simmering, just steaming. You want the water to be about 165ºF to 170ºF. Poach the links for 10 minutes, then serve. If you are not serving them right away, no need to poach the links yet.
- Boudin does not keep well, so eat it all within a couple days. It does freeze reasonably well, however.
Notes
Nutrition
HOMEMADE CAJUN SEASONING
Make this if you can’t find store-bought Cajun seasoning. It’s a little different from my normal spice mix, but it’s reflective of what you often find in boudin. If you want a redder sausage, increase the paprika. If you want it less spicy, reduce the cayenne.
- 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon ground white pepper
- 1 tablespoon cayenne
- 1 tablespoon sweet paprika
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
I have been living in Bangladesh for three years. They don’t have a clue what boudin is, so I have been making it with a variety of meats (the Muslim community is pretty big here, so pork is not a first choice) and everyone loves it. I have also been using the brine to cook my red beans. Awesome. Just awesome.
I moved to Texas very early in life. You could literally drive less then 10 miles from my house and get any type of food you wanted even african goat if you so desired. I moved to upstate NY a couple of years ago with my work. I thought before I moved that it would be a foodies dream place…Hey! Its NY! Right? Right….
Wah~wah~waahhh. NO. Corning, NY is as close to a food desert as I ever want to be. No decent mexican, forget greek completely. Italian is reduced to tough crust pizza and poorly sauced pasta. No way to even buy a lot of the ingredients to make your own decent ethnic anything!
I missed boudin. There was a little shop in Houston who made the best boudin, ever.
I ran across your recipe at 2am and had it made by dawn. Thank you so much for a taste of home!
Bill: I just made a triple batch. I added the bay leaves during the cooking portion of the process.
You never told us when to use the bay leaf
is it okay to use beef liver?
Kim: Yes it is.
Boudin is made from the leavings after butchering a hog, why would you use chicken livers.
David: Because boudin is made from all sorts of things, not just the leavings after butchering a hog.
Pork liver is strong and many can’t take the bold taste it has. That is why people will substitute with chicken liver.
So I’m from southeast Texas and I love boudain but I never saw anyone make it… it would just magically appear… and I just got a meat grinder and I’ve been dying to do this.. I tried another recipe before I got the grinder and it used chicken livers. I’m not sure if it’s possible to overdo it on the liver but the mixture was inedible and I’m not picky. Before I tried out this recipe I was wondering if you had any insight? Other tips?
Hey I know this comment is old but I just happened to see it and wanted to add my experience. It’s definitely possible to overdo it with grinding livers. One year we got a new food processor and over-processed the chicken livers for the cornbread dressing. It ended up being a little bitter and have too “smooth” a texture”. When it comes to those, I think it’s better to have a minced type consistency.
I’ve been looking for a boudin recipe to try out, for some time now. I ‘ve made kielbasa and andoui, chorieso, and brats, multiple breakfast sausages. But no boudin yet!
I’m from Louisiana so I know I know what good boudin tastes like by far one of my favorite recipes to make.
If I were to use a pre mixed cajun seasoning blend, should I scale down the 4T of salt? Considering pre mixed spice blends have salt in them. I notice your spice blend doesn’t contain any salt.
Dakota: Absolutely. I might even cut it back to 1 tablespoon of salt in that case.
Last deer season, I was inspired by the boudin style of sausage and created what I call “stuffed pepper sausage”. I basically make a stuffed pepper meat mixture with the onions, garlic, green peppers and spices added in with cooked rice. Stuff this in casings, then cook in some stewed tomatoes from the garden, and it’s a great meal! I wonder if anyone else has had similar ideas? Thanks!