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/

2. www.dukeshillham.co.uk/

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