Boudain (aka Boudin)

• 2 pork hearts
• 4 pork kidneys
• 1 lb. pork liver
• 5 lbs. pork meat
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 3 onions, chopped
• 4 cups cooked rice
• 2 bunches green onions, chopped
• 1 cup parsley, chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste

Boil the first 6 ingredients until tender then grind. Reserve some of the broth. Add rice, salt, pepper, green onions and parsley. Add enough broth to make a moist dressing. Stuff dressing into casing using a sausage stuffer.

Boudain can be served as a breakfast sausage or as an appetizer. It can be boiled, fried or heated in the microwave oven.

A Cajun Boucherie

In Cajun country it seemed that thirteen represented that magical age during which the attainment of certain rites of passage on the way to man-hood was inexplicably thrust upon me like a beast of burden. It was time for me to venture away from the bird nest, so to speak, amble over to the end of the limb, spread my wings and flap them a few times while standing in place just to get the hang of it for when it came time to take flight (or, in my case, when grandpa decided that it was time).

Entry level positions on our farm, at age thirteen, weren't hard to find. They cropped-up everywhere (especially during the rice harvest). The most exciting job I had was driving a large tractor and pulling a rice cart around the fields, without an official driver's license, to drain the harvesters of their pay-loads and transfer the grain into the transport vehicles. Shucks! That wasn't work. That was fun!

It was the other entry-level projects which I wasn't that fond of ... like feeding and watering the stock everyday, cleaning up their stalls, milking cows, shearing sheep, walking miles with a shovel on my shoulders repairing holes in our rice field and crayfish pond levee system caused by over-zealous rats who loved the sound of water escaping ... and a host of other mundane tasks that no kid should have to go through just to prove that he's a man. But, I got her done.

The final act of the virilité accomplie (manhood accomplished) phase was to slaughter and process my first hog (under the tutelage of my grandfather, of course). I had already become accustomed to bagging and processing smaller game like ducks, geese, rabbit and quail, but killing and processing a large animal like a full-grown hog was unnerving for me to say the least, and kind of up-front and personal. But again, I got her done.

This was a time when I learned to make cracklins and boudain (boudin). We used a 30 gallon three-legged cast-iron outdoor pot filled half-full with water. It weighed several hundred pounds but the thick iron was an excellent heat distributor. The fire-watcher was responsible for adding firewood to keep everything continuously cooking. We would all take turns stirring the cracklins in the hot cauldron with a long wooden paddle.

After dressing the hog (it was more like undressing the poor thing) we had to prepare the animal for bristle-hair removal. Hogs, especially mature ones, have tough bristles. The best method to remove the tough hair was to douse small areas at the time with boiling water from the hot cracklin pot. We used a metal ladle for the boiling water and a dull knife to scrape off the hair from the treated area. Once that job was complete (from head to toe) the entire hog was as smooth as a baby's behind.

The next step was to remove the hog's skin while leaving a significant amount of fat attached to it. Then that would be further cut down into 1 ½ inch cubes and dumped into the large cooking pot of boiling water.

After several hours of slow cooking, the water would eventually evaporate leaving behind the melted fat which would then be processed into cooking lard. A two-hundred pound farm-raised hog could yield several gallons of cooking fat. And the by-product was “cracklins” of course. Treated with a little salt and cayenne pepper, this Cajun favorite was always a big hit at our home. It was great with boudain and baked sweet potatoes, too. Ahhheee! Lache pas la patate!