I finally had a minute to put this together, in case anyone's interested! It's more of a peek at my process than an actual recipe, though I'll try to quantify this at some point so I can reproduce it easily going forward.
I'd been wanting to make boudin for ages, but I don't have a device that will allow me to easily stuff casings yet. The January Throwdown gave me an idea, though... what if I made the boudin and just stuffed it inside something that would make it a finger food without the casings? So off I went.
That's just over 6 lbs. of pork, a mix of some fattier pieces I trimmed off a butt and a chunk of really thick pork belly I found at the Asian market. I brined this in a simple salt/sugar/water solution with a bunch of chiles (jalapenos & Thai red chiles since that's what I had around) for a bit more than 24 hours, because that's just how it worked out. Then I rinsed it all off and threw it into a stock pot with a pound of chicken livers (again, what I happened to have in the freezer) and enough water to cover it up. I simmered it for a long time... probably about an hour and a half. It was **ugggghhhly** so no pics of that!
It looked a little less hideous once I fished it out (with a good amount of the cooking liquid brought along to the party) and added a bunch of green onions and parsley and some more chilies. Also, seasoned with your basic Cajun type spices, including a healthy dose of file powder.
In the absence of an actual meat grinder, I opted for my trusty Cuisinart. Did it up in fairly small batches so I could get it thoroughly mixed without turning it to paste. Lots of little pulses. At this point I was brave enough to taste it and it was INSANE already. This stuff is hard to mess up, folks.
Once I had it all chopped, back into the pot with the liquid so I could make sure it was pretty wet before adding the rice.
Most of the recipes I read called for a LOT of rice... I was too afraid to put it all in at once, so this is how I started it out. Once I started trying to roll it up in the leaves, though, I realized I needed more (and then didn't take any other pictures because I was all excited!) I'd say I added about half again as much as you see here.
To make the collard rolls... I washed the leaves, trimmed the stems flush with their bottoms, then cut out the widest parts of the stems. The resulted in the leaves being split at the bottom, of course, but I would fix that later. First, dropped them into boiling salted water for all of about three minutes, then drained them off and plopped them in a bowl of cold water to cool and stop cooking. To roll them, I took a leaf, crossed the split end of the bottom so they overlapped and formed a solid base, then spooned in some of the boudin, rolled them up, and placed them seam-side down in a foil catering pan. I also stuffed a tiny foil loaf pan with the boudin so I could just eat it outright -- I'd never had it smoked before!
These didn't take terribly long... I pulled the rolls after about an hour and a half. The temperature stayed around 225° the whole time, thankfully. I left the little pan of boudin in for another half hour or so, as it was much more dense.
Once done, I just mixed up some super simple Creole mustard remoulade (which we totally ignored after the first couple of bites). And that was that.
Thank you to everyone here who gave me confidence to give this a shot! And thanks for watching... hopefully I managed to format this well enough to be readable and didn't botch the photo uploads!!
Sunny
PS: I put this in "Sausage" because it's mostly about how I made the boudin; feel free to move it someplace else if it belongs in another spot on the forum.
I'd been wanting to make boudin for ages, but I don't have a device that will allow me to easily stuff casings yet. The January Throwdown gave me an idea, though... what if I made the boudin and just stuffed it inside something that would make it a finger food without the casings? So off I went.
It looked a little less hideous once I fished it out (with a good amount of the cooking liquid brought along to the party) and added a bunch of green onions and parsley and some more chilies. Also, seasoned with your basic Cajun type spices, including a healthy dose of file powder.
In the absence of an actual meat grinder, I opted for my trusty Cuisinart. Did it up in fairly small batches so I could get it thoroughly mixed without turning it to paste. Lots of little pulses. At this point I was brave enough to taste it and it was INSANE already. This stuff is hard to mess up, folks.
Once I had it all chopped, back into the pot with the liquid so I could make sure it was pretty wet before adding the rice.
Most of the recipes I read called for a LOT of rice... I was too afraid to put it all in at once, so this is how I started it out. Once I started trying to roll it up in the leaves, though, I realized I needed more (and then didn't take any other pictures because I was all excited!) I'd say I added about half again as much as you see here.
To make the collard rolls... I washed the leaves, trimmed the stems flush with their bottoms, then cut out the widest parts of the stems. The resulted in the leaves being split at the bottom, of course, but I would fix that later. First, dropped them into boiling salted water for all of about three minutes, then drained them off and plopped them in a bowl of cold water to cool and stop cooking. To roll them, I took a leaf, crossed the split end of the bottom so they overlapped and formed a solid base, then spooned in some of the boudin, rolled them up, and placed them seam-side down in a foil catering pan. I also stuffed a tiny foil loaf pan with the boudin so I could just eat it outright -- I'd never had it smoked before!
These didn't take terribly long... I pulled the rolls after about an hour and a half. The temperature stayed around 225° the whole time, thankfully. I left the little pan of boudin in for another half hour or so, as it was much more dense.
Once done, I just mixed up some super simple Creole mustard remoulade (which we totally ignored after the first couple of bites). And that was that.
Thank you to everyone here who gave me confidence to give this a shot! And thanks for watching... hopefully I managed to format this well enough to be readable and didn't botch the photo uploads!!
Sunny
PS: I put this in "Sausage" because it's mostly about how I made the boudin; feel free to move it someplace else if it belongs in another spot on the forum.
