What is Blood Sausage?

I love the taste of fried black pudding but I do not like the lumps of fat. Is there a version available in the UK that is 'smooth'?

I'm dying to try it. It sounds interesting. I'll give it a go when I'm in the UK later this year.

Yes, Great Britain does have this on a traditional English breakfast fry up. It's best done until crispy on the outside, for my taste.

If you think black pudding is bad, you should investigate the Scottish Haggis.

My parents came to Ohio from central Europe and would often purchase a freshly slaughtered pig from a nearby farm to prepare smoked ham and various types of sausages including blood sausage or kishka, as it's sometimes called. Everything was homemade using the freshest ingredients. It was absolutely delicious.

What's ironic is that I would gross out my classmates when I told them the casings were literally the pig's intestines. Now I can understand the revulsion of vegetarians, but anyone who regularly eats commercially mass produced hot dogs which are rendered from far more "interesting" substances from the animal should really keep their comments to themselves.

This seems like the kind of thing that sounds bad, but just tastes exactly like meat when you eat it.

If I had a good blood sausage recipe and access to some blood I'd give it a try, but I doubt I'd be able to find any that have already been made in this area.

Although, in saying that, sometimes when you feel a bit off about eating something it starts to taste off, so I'd have to be feeling open minded.

Yes, a lot of people did eat it, because it was a shame to waste any part of an animal if you've just slaughtered it and your family lives meal to meal. But, on the other hand, carcasses that have not been properly drained of blood don't keep very well, and blood in general isn't going to keep very well in hot weather, so I doubt many tribes that lived in the desert would have blood based meals just because it wouldn't stay good in storage.

I could be wrong though, I don't know if spicing it or smoking it would work the way it can for other kinds of meat.

@anon288802 - Actually it's very healthy and contains a lot of the nutrients people need (iron in particular, obviously). I know there are tribes in Africa who live solely on blood and milk from their cows, which they bleed (without hurting them) to collect the blood. They are the only group in the world who can basically live without killing another living thing (plants included).

It's actually pretty strange that there's such a stigma against it in some modern societies. I mean, there is blood in steak and every other kind of meat. It doesn't all drain away, it just gets cooked until it's no longer bright red. So, what's the difference?

It can't be healthy for people to ingest blood. Is the blood simply to provide a flavor or what? I have to admit I will never even try this. It sounds absolutely disgusting.

This was originally an autumn slaughter feast item. When hams and sausages were hung in the smokehouse, the parts which could not be stored for winter consumption were used immediately. Nothing was wasted. One never knew when the extra vitamins and calories would be needed. Blood sausage, blood pudding, liver and kidney, etc, were all part of the feast, and people passing through joined in the feast if they happened to be there at the time. Lots of history in this dish!

As a child, teenager and young adult I loved this heated in butter til it burst open and then mixed with ketchup. I always thought it carried the name "blood sausage" because of its color.

One of my grown daughters asked me about the name since she also loved it growing up. After reading her the ingredients, I was shocked. She replied, "Yeah I will never eat that again". Glad I have been a vegetarian for over 10 years now. Yuck!

@zanna1tx: try a Mexican butcher shop and ask for morcilla ("morsija" in Dutch). When I still lived in Holland my mother baked thick slices and we ate it on white bread with slices of baked apple on top. Yummy!

@zanna1tx: Herberts grocery store sells it in San Marcos, Texas. It is on River road. Good stuff.

Zanna1tx for sure in Colombian Restaurants (Houston) you can order it, it is called Morsilla.

I had black pudding last night and I admit, it was delicious. I worried it would taste coppery or weird, but it didn't. I would eat it again.

Try Bernhard Meat Processing, Inc., in Kerrville, Texas

It is unlikely I'll ever eat blood sausage after reading this article. It sounds pretty disgusting.

Wouldn't you drink blood if that's all the vitamins you could live from?

It looks and tastes nasty.

We have never had blood pudding so we can't really say we don't like it.

Used to love this when I was a kid growing up in the Netherlands. Is there any place in Texas I can order or buy blood sausage? Thank you, Suzanna.

Blood pudding is completely different. It is blood also, but it is cooked and congealed outside of a casing, not like the blood sausage. Same type of food, just not the same thing. The English have black pudding and blood sausage.

I believe the British have yet another name for this type of food -- black pudding or blood pudding.