North America · Volume 32, The Prairie and the Port
Boudin Blanc
New Iberia, Louisiana
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Boudin Blanc
Per Southern Foodways Alliance's oral history with Ted Legnon of New Iberia
Ingredients
An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.
- 2 lb, diced cooked pork, commonly Boston butt and trimmings
- 1/2 lb, chopped cooked pork liver
- equal parts (to meat) cooked long grain rice
- onion, celery and bell pepper (the holy trinity)
- 2 tsp Creole seasoning, 1/8 tsp crushed red pepper dried spice mix
- natural pork casing
Method
- Combine cooked pork, commonly Boston butt and trimmings, cooked pork liver, and cooked long grain rice in roughly equal parts meat to rice, seasoned with the trinity and a dried spice mix, and stuff into natural pork casing.
- It is eaten as breakfast, as a snack, and, per Southern Foodways Alliance's own oral history with the boucherie operator Ted Legnon of New Iberia, as a genuine hospitality gift, oilfield salesmen historically buying ten to fifteen pounds at a time to give to customers.
Notes
Legnon's own operation turns out roughly fifteen hundred pounds of boudin a day, using recipes passed down orally and by observation rather than written, a living tradition rather than a museum piece.
Boudin rouge, the same technique with fresh blood folded in, is named in the technique ladder above and deliberately given no recipe here, for the reasons stated there.
What a modern chef changes
Separately cooked filling, finished with smoke
Rung: boudin stuffing
Method
- Cook the pork and liver sous vide, separately, each held at its own correct temperature, before combining with the rice, a genuine improvement on a single boiling step that currently cooks two very different cuts to the same degree.
- Smoke the finished, cased boudin briefly over pecan on a Big Green Egg rather than serving it straight from the poach, adding a layer of aroma the traditional dish, poached rather than smoked, does not carry.
- Dehydrate a portion of the trinity for the seasoning mix, per the gumbo entry above, concentrating its flavour into the stuffing itself.
Notes
Smoking the finished boudin is this chapter's own extension of the technique rather than a documented practice at any named boudin house.