Navajo Blood Sausage
Every culture on every continent makes a blood sausage of some sort. They all consist of the animal’s blood(sheep, beef, or pork), a filler(cornmeal, rice, barley, buckwheat, etc), and seasonings; stuffed into either sheep stomach, and beef or pork intestines. They are then boiled until cooked through. The sausage is then eaten out of the casings(both sheep stomach and beef casings being inedible in this instance). Blood sausages can be traced back in the Navajo tribe to the 1600’s when they started farming sheep. They would traditionally use sheeps blood mixed with cornmeal, potato, chilies, and seasonings, stuffed inside a sheep’s stomach.Unless you know a farmer, finding lamb’s blood and stomach will be hard to find. Using beef blood and pork casings is an acceptable substitute. The sausages will be in a ring bologna shape instead of a softball-sized stuffed sheep stomach.
Equipment
- sausage stuffer
Ingredients
- 20 oz beef blood
- 12 oz pork fat cut into tiny cubes
- 2 cups cornmeal
- 1 large potato peeled; cut into small cubes
- 1 medium onion finely chopped
- 1 large jalapeño finely chopped
- 2 tbsp salt
- 1 tbsp black pepper
- pork casings
Cranberry Mustard
- 1/4 cup spicy brown mustard
- 1/4 cup cranberries
- 1 tbsp sugar
Instructions
- Bring a small pot of salted water to a boil. Boil the potatoes until cooked through; about 8 minutes. Drain and cool completely.
- In a large bowl, season the blood with salt and pepper.
- Stir in the rest of the ingredients.
- Using your sausage stuffer, pipe the filling into the sausage casings.
- Carefully twist the sausage into rings.
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the blood sausages to the water. Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer the sausages for an hour.
- Let rest for 15 minutes before serving.
