Polish kiszka (Keesh-kah), also known as kaszanka or krupniok, is a type of sausage made with fresh pig blood. It may sound strange, but many cuisines around the world have their own version of this dish, even French haute cuisine. A sausage is a blood-filled sausage that is cooked or dried and mixed with a filling until it is thick enough to solidify when cooled. Pork, sheep, lamb, cow, chicken, or goose blood is usually used. The answer to the question “What is the blood sausage?” is quite simple.
It is a sausage made from animal blood and other ingredients such as spices, fats and grains. It is usually stuffed in a large gut with animal sausage and then boiled. It can be fried before eating it, usually in slices and is common in many countries around the world, although it is becoming less and less popular. Two things you should know about this dish: firstly, it tastes great. Secondly, yes, it really is a sausage made of blood.
Other varieties of black pudding include boudin rouge (Creole and Cajun), Rellena or Moronga (Mexico) and sanganel (Friuli). In Tibetan cuisine, sausages or gyurma refer to blood sausages and are made with yak or sheep's blood, which may or may not include rice or toasted barley flour as a filling. Sausages made from blood are usually called morcela or negrinha (a slang term in black Portuguese that means dark or black). Sausage is said to originate from Tampere and is considered an integral part of the city's culture. Looking at the formulas above, it's obvious that the formula that cannot be cut into slices (with a filling) costs less to produce and this type of sausage can be found all over the world. Before using it, it must be stirred again and filtered through a cheese cloth, otherwise the sausage may contain blood clots.
In other countries, the name black pudding in its own language is often translated literally as black pudding, for example blodpølse (Denmark and Norway), blodkorv (Sweden), blutwurst (Germany), bloedworst (Netherlands), verivorst (Estonia), chouriço de Sangue (Portugal), boudin noir (France) and Longganisang Dugo (Philippines). In Austria, it is usually prepared in a dish known as Blunzngröstl, which consists of fried potatoes and black pudding. The French Confrérie des Chevaliers du Goûte-Boudin (Brotherhood of the Knights of Sausage Tasting) from Mortagne-au-Perche, in southern Normandy, organizes an annual competition for international sausage specialties. It is a practice to freeze stuffed (raw) sausages in a freezer and then, at a later date, defrost them and cook them in hot water. However, sausages have also been a traditional food in ancient Africa and Asia, suggesting that many historic populations developed similar techniques for conserving and preparing blood. An Italian-American version of black pudding in the San Francisco Bay Area is called biroldo and has pine nuts, raisins, spices and pig snout, and is made with pig or cow blood.
The addition of filling material makes it very economical and the number of recipes that can be created is only limited by the sausage manufacturer's imagination. These dishes are collectively referred to as “black pudding”, although each culture has different names for its unique preparations. In Chile, black pudding is called prieta (synonymous with black, black) and tends to have a very thick skin, so it is eaten cut lengthwise. If you want to try sausages in the United States, you can often find them at a specialty butcher shop or specialty grocery store.
