Morcilla blood sausage recipe

Morcilla is a Spanish blood sausage, popular on its own and as an ingredient in stews. It’s made with pig’s blood, rice, onions, and spices, although recipes vary from region to region. I have settled on a variation that involves more minced pork and fat and therefore a less mealy texture than English black pudding (see here: Black pudding recipe). This can be fairly time consuming to make and tricky to stuff, due to the looser mixture - but it’s worth the effort!

I use a sous-vide to bring the links up to 80c for 40 minutes. Before i vacuum seal the links, i freeze them for an hour, as it helps them keep their shape when sealing in to the bags. I have included instructions below on how you would cook without a sous vide. If you have a really deep pan, you can hang the links in the water from a dowel rod!

Please take a look at how-to-make-sausages, how-to-cook-sausages and the-science-of-great-sausages. These guides will apply to all the sausage recipes on this site and will provide you with a great primer!

• 700 g Pork shoulder, diced
• 100 g Pork fat, diced
• 1/2 White onion, diced
• 300 ml Pigs blood (43g dried pigs blood mixed with 300ml tepid water)
• 1.5 tbsp sweet smoked paprika
• 1 g Bay leaves, crushed and ground up (this is around 5 leaves)
• 5 g Black pepper
• 200 g Cooked white rice
• 15 g Salt
• 2 Cloves garlic, crushed
• 1/4 tsp cloves, ground
• 1 tbsp lard
• 4 meters of hog middle casings

• Place the diced pork and fat in the freezer about an hour ahead of time
• Soak the casings in warm water
• Cool the metal parts of your grinder and stuffer before use, if possible
• Remove the diced pork from the freezer when it’s got a frozen crust to it and the fat when nearly frozen solid
• Grind the pork and fat into a bowl
• Cook the rice and strain and allow to completely cool
• Cook the onions and garlic in a pan, with the lard on a low head until sweated, then add the Paprika, pepper and Bay leaves and mix, allow to cool
• Add the dried blood to the water and mix well. Strain.
• Add the cold onions, garlic, spices and rice to the blood, along with the pork mince and fat
• Stuff into 8-10 inch sausages and tie the ends together (i find it helps to leave 2-3 inches between the ends as it helps when vac sealing!)
• Bring a large ban up to around 78 - 80c and immerse the sausages for 30 mins. Make sure they are completely submerged.
• Once cooked, dry off and either oven (25 mins at 180) or fry (medium heat for 15 mins) to add some depth of colour and provide some “snap” to the casings

Try it on top of a white bean stew!