Boudin Blanc

As tradition built it

Boudin Blanc

Per Southern Foodways Alliance's oral history with Ted Legnon of New Iberia

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

• 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

1. 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.
2. 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.

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 our own extension of the technique rather than a documented practice at any named boudin house.