Is the correct way to make a traditional black pudding cut and dried? Marc Frederic certainly thinks so. The hugely experienced charcutier from Dawlish in Devon travels extensively throughout the UK and mainland Europe teaching his craft. The French know him as Le Charcutier Anglais. When it comes to black pudding Marc is in no doubt that, like vampires, fresh blood is the only way to go.
Black pudding, Morcilla, Boudin Noir,
Blutwurst whatever you wish to call them, they have been part of our food heritage for thousands of years. Yet today here in the UK they are made from a dried blood powder mix, this being produced from indoor reared pigs from the Netherlands, Belgium and Scandinavia.
OK, you may not have known, but now you do, what are you going to do about it?
I can tell you what I do, I choose to only eat black pudding made from real blood and blood only from locally free range pigs. Also as a Judge I no longer award products using this dried blood mix.
I have friends who commercially produce black puddings for a living. They were forced into this type of production with dried blood powder during the foot & mouth era. But that is behind us now and we need to encourage them to go back to using real blood before we lose this artisan craft.
Jay Rayner the food critic and journalist has mentioned about this food plight several times including giving it some air time on the BBC’s television programme “The One Show”, now when he mentions a plight like this, you know we have to listen at the very least.
However it is up to us to decide whether we continue to eat these puddings with the knowledge of what goes inside them.
A campaign sounds a bit strong I know, but to encourage the chefs and food businesses to use artisan producers of blackpudding, we’ll list those producers who still use real blood on our blog Le Charcutier Anglais.
So if you know of such a producer, then let me know to include them on the list below.
List of producers who use real blood in their black puddings are:
1. http://www.jackmccarthy.ie/shop/
Marc Frederic
So do you agree with Marc that true black pudding can only be made with fresh blood or do you believe that dried is just as good? Let us know and if you want to contribute an article to the debate then we will be glad to host it. Also if you know of a producer that should be added to Marc’s “fresh blood” list then let him and/or us know.
Read Marc’s blog at http://charcutieranglais.blogspot.com
Or Follow him on Twitter @MarcFrederic
[...] I started to think about having a go ourselves. Like almost everywhere in the UK, they used dried blood. I’d idly toyed with using fresh blood from the pig for the supper club, but after reading an [...]
[...] originally intended to use dried pig’s blood, but changed my mind after reading more about food heroes such as Ireland’s McCarthys of [...]
Years ago my father use to make his own black pudding,but ever since he could not get real blood instead dried he has never tried.
Can anyone tell me where i can get blood that is not Dried!
Thanks Norton
I am fortunate in being able to access fresh pigs blood and have only made black pudding with fresh. I have a bigger problem acquiring a suitable grade of oatmeal, preferring medium oatmeal, but have on occasion broken down porage oats to a finer consistency. The most tedious job is cutting back fat small enough; much commercially available b.pudding has fat lumps far too large. Interested to read that suet can be used as most back fat we have goes into commercial traditional sausage making and so controls my b. pudding activities on the side as gifts to friends who otherwise would be deprived.
Morning,
Your excellent blog page comes up very high on Google when looking for fresh blood black pudding. Is there a possibility of you updating your front page to reflect the increased number of artisan businesses which make fresh blood black pudding? Is this a little cheeky? Marc F’s blog is up-to-date:
http://charcutieranglais.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=black+pudding.
Regards
Matt