How do I Make Black Pudding?

There are a number of ways to make black pudding, usually depending on the particular recipe you are following. In general, you will need a quantity of animal blood, various fillers and seasonings, as well as sausage casings and equipment for filling them. You should also consider ways in which you can cook your pudding; baking them in a pan in a water bath is one popular approach, as is boiling them in a large pot of water. There are also recipes for black pudding that do not require sausage casings, but instead prepare the pudding as a loose filling.

Black pudding, sometimes also called blood pudding, is a type of sausage made using animal blood and a number of seasonings and fillers. The type of animal blood you use depends on your preferences and what is available in your area. If you raise animals for slaughter, for example, you may be able to collect blood from them prior to eating, or if you take your animals to a slaughterhouse then you can request that the blood be collected. Otherwise, you may be able to purchase blood for black pudding from a butcher or a specialty grocery store.

Once you have the blood for your black pudding — pig, lamb, and goose blood are all popular choices — then you should consider the fillers you will use. Many recipes call for fillers such as oats, barley, bread crumbs, and minced onions that can be left raw or lightly sautéed. These are typically mixed with the blood in a bowl, and various seasonings and spices are then added to the mixture. The seasonings you choose will depend on your own preferences, though salt, pepper, mint, and cayenne are all fairly common.

You will then need to decide on whether you want to make traditional sausages or a loose filling. For loose filling, you can take the black pudding mixture and cook it in a large pot or Dutch oven until cooked through and then serve the pudding in bowls or on plates. Traditional black pudding is made by stuffing the sausage filling into cases, and these can often be purchased from butchers. You may need a funnel or sausage filling equipment to make it easier to fill and prepare your sausages; once you have made your individual sausages you can then boil them in water until cooked through, or bake them in a pan that is partially submerged in a water bath. After cooking the sausages, black pudding is typically prepared by slicing the sausages and frying them in a pan prior to serving.