Cooking with Blood

After reading this blogpost on the Nordic Food Lab blog, I've become more interested in cooking with blood. Seeing as I'm probably not alone in the Chefsteps community who is interested in cooking with blood, I'd like to ask you for some of your favourite recipes containing blood. I'm looking for your favourite black pudding recipe, your most delicious bloody milk and anything else; from pressed duck to black pancakes.

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Johan_Edstrom_5586

I have to dig in grammas recipes

I grew up on it....

Matt_67991

I kind of want to try the macarons

tshewman

@Pepijin, Thank you for this!! Now my curiosity is way up! First would be where do we procure it? Just ask our butcher? May seem like a dumb question, but that's my first. Seems much more flexible than I would have imagined.

Pepijn_31744

@Todd_Shewman, you're welcome. Indeed, just ask your butcher. My butcher's doesn't have it in stock, but they can order it for me. They get a batch every tuesday so it'll be fairly fresh.

I've put in an order for a litre pigs blood yesterday. I figure I'll first try some pastry items replacing eggs for blood using the Nordic Food Lab substitution ratio's. Will see how that works out.

tshewman

Thanks @Pepijn!

Pepijn_31744

@Johan_Edstrom I'd love to hear about your grandma's recipes! Anything you really look back to with joy, or still dread to this day, would be great.

robert.c.brown15

Ha, I posted that article weeks ago and no one noticed! Glad more people have seen it!

Johan_Edstrom_5586

This is a fairly standard Black or blood pudding recipe.

It was a staple in Swedish schools growing up, usually served with lingonberry and taters.

ca 2 kg (enough for 12 servings, serving = 150 g)

1 litre blood
5 dl beer or light beer.
8 dl coarse rye flour.
1 onion, chopped
150 g butter
1 Tsp salt
½ tsp ground clove
1 ½ tsp ground mixed (spice pepper medly)
1 ½ tsp ground white pepper.
2 tsp dried marjoram or thyme
½ dl Syrup (Swedish syrup is dark as but much sweeter than molasses)

From this link - if anyone wants I think this'll parse in google translate, otherwise I can

help with translation.

http://www.svensktkott.se/recept/hemlagad-blodpudding/

You eat this as cut ham or meatloaf pieces that you pan fry.

Samuel_68313

Oh my god a black pudding macaron sounds outrageous. Is there a recipe for that anywhere?

Chris_Young_80640

Here is the blood pudding recipe that I developed for Heston:

1.3 g star ansie

0.5 g dried ginger

0.3 g cinnamon

0.3 g Sichuan peppercorns

0.2 g cardamom seeds

Toast, crush, wrap in a muslin satchel

690 g UHT heavy cream (you want the cream that contains stabilizers like carageenan)

Heat cream to 70 °C, add spice satchel and let infuse while the cream cools to room temperature.

160 g pig's blood

Combine pigs blood with cream, and reduce the mixture at or below 70 °C until very thick. This is easiest to do with a Thermomix with a whisk attachement, but it can be done in an uncovered container in a water bath (stirring frequently). The thickness should reach the consistency of a puree. It takes a while. So long as the temperature stays below 70 °C, you will get a very smooth texture (none of the gritiness that you associate with blood puddings and such).

Season the thickened mixture with sugar and salt to taste. It can be refrigerated and reheated later, so long as you use the stabilized UHT cream.

Pepijn_31744

Went by the butchers today and picked up my litre pigs blood. The smell was lovely, very sweet and clean. I'm assuming that is what it is supposed to smell like. As a first try I made some 10 minutes cakes today. I used the ChefSteps recipe from the whipping siphon class and substituted the egg for pigs blood using the Nordic Food Lab ratio's. I added some extra blood to see if that would result in a more pronounced blood taste.

Blended, charged siphon as usual and played around with the microwave times. After some testing I ended up with the ideal texture by using 25 grams of batter microwaved for 36 seconds. While in the microwave the smell was pretty strong and reminded me of Black Pudding. As the cake cooled down the smell was less noticeable, but remained clearly distinguishable. I was amazed by the taste, not at all what I expected. I expected a very pronounced blood taste, instead it was really subtle.

I asked some random passersby to try the cakes (informing them that there is a pig ingredient, but not revealing which) and people seemed to like it. One woman thought it was a bit boring. None mentioned an unknown taste or a blood taste, and none seemed to mind when I told them.

Picture below. Sorry for the quality of the picture, my phone is the only camera I have at hand.

Pepijn_31744

Attempted to make some bloody pasta today.

Used the CS fresh pasta recipe and substituted part of the eggs with pigs blood. Which worked pretty well... right up until the cooking part of the recipe. The texture of the spaghetti was a bit rubbery, the dough might've been a tad overworked. The worst part was the colour though. The moment the pasta hit the water the colour changed from a beautiful purple hue to what I'll politely describe as a distinct 'mud' colour. I was hoping the colour would be more like the Valencian arroz negro. Leaving the eggs out completely and using more blood might result in a darker hue and the spaghetti being a bit more appealing. Larger pasta which requires a bit more cooking might help as well(?). If anybody has any better ideas to improve the colour (and texture) I'd love to hear about it. If there is a way to cook the pasta without too much protein denaturation and thus keeping the beautiful deep red/purple colour that would be even better. Seems a bit unlikely though. Without improving the colour, I wouldn't try this again.

Last but not least, taste was fine. The spaghetti was a bit on the sweet side and had no detectable metallic flavour, maybe a slight hint of it. To serve I quickly covered it with a batch of mushroom sauce to hide what can only be described as a failed experiment. Some pictures below for reference.

Brendan_Lee_56950

I actually kinda like the color. It does look a bit off with the creamy sauce on it but if the sauce was more like a browned butter emulsion or something similar I'd say it would be nice.

Nicky_J_17040

@Pepijn....looks awesome.

We did an Italian version of a blood sausage a little while back. Pigs blood, ground pork/fatback, raisins, pine nuts, garlic...

I don't remember the rest of the ingredients.

Then was stuffed ( well, funneled) into the large cow casings (bung).

THen poached and served cold. Not too bad, but i think I prefer the Spanish style Morcilla with rice.

SteveM_20803

If you mix nitrates with the blood, would it keep its color? I know that is what keeps hams and some sausages pink.... Can't really tell you why but that has been my experience.

Chris_Young_80640

@SteveM — Actually no. Nitrates added directly the blood will actually rapidly discolor it brown. In muscle tissue there are enzymes that help the transform the nitrate into nitric oxide that binds with the myoglobin. These enzymes are not present in blood (or even pure myoglobin) and things don't turn out the way you would hope (ask me how I know ;-). If you want it to keep it's color, the best strategy that I know of is to use carbon monoxide gas, which will displace oxygen when it binds to the heme group, and give you a durable vibrant red color.

But carbon monoxide should be used with extreme care and caution. Aside from its toxicity when inhaled, it's also flammable.

Samuel_68313

I'm probably not going to do this for just...so many reasons, but out of pure curiosity can you explain the actual process of using carbon monoxide to do this?

tshewman

Is it possible to use fresh beef blood? So far, haven't been able to find pork blood but can get fresh beef blood.

Pepijn_31744

As far as I know the composition of blood in mammals are quite similar, so I see no reason why not. The cows blood should behave in a similar fashion as the pigs blood. The specific anticoagulant treatment used is probably of higher influence.

Nordic Food Lab posted this comparison of eggs, pigs blood and cows blood: http://static.squarespace.com/static/5006630dc4aa3dba7737ef40/t/522ddc38e4b0d5218db59f64/1378737209913/blood%20table.png

I'm assuming the taste will be pretty similar as well, although it can't hurt to do a side-by-side comparison to see if there are differences.

tshewman

Thanks @Pepijn. I tried looking (via google) for the chemical differences and really couldn't find anything decent. This is quite helpful. Presumably the diet of the individual animal would impact the flavor, but not necessarily the prot/cho/fat content. I would have expected a bit of a difference in the protein content in the larger animal, but I guess lb for lb, there shouldn't be that big of an absolute difference. Perhaps in the fiber types and hence Myoglobin etc.

Liangxinhuo_10818

I had a taste of pork blood, not so delicious as it show, but it‘s useful to clean our stomach

tshewman

Just picked up some beef bl (could not find any pork-not even from my butcher-they said the challenge of getting the bl out of a pig apparently isn't worth what little they charge). Will start small tomorrow and see how it goes. BTW - if frozen and you chip away because you only want a portion, your cupboards will look like a murder site....ask me how I know. :-)

Pepijn_31744

In the meantime I've tried to make the CS Molten Chocolate Soufflé, against substituting egg with blood.

Whipping the blood was a real fun experience. It took longer than expected, a lot longer than whipping egg whites, and looking at the results perhaps I should've whipped it even longer. The fun part was the colour, I've never seen such an amazing colour from what was basically just one ingredient. The whipped blood was radiating red, it almost got me to try the whipped blood raw, but for some reason I still felt a bit hesitant.

the batter in the ramekin just before it went in the oven

As you can see below the result was not exactly what it should've been. The soufflés were quite beautiful, but they hadn't risen nearly enough. I'm not sure how to solve that. I'm pretty sure the ramekins were buttered enough. The blood could've been whipped a bit more, and perhaps it has something to do with the different coagulation points of egg versus blood. Would baking it at a lower temperature help?

The taste was really something else. As with the other recipes the blood flavour was not as pronounced as I expected it to be considering the amount of blood used. However, it was definitely present and worked really well with the chocolate flavour. It might be just me, but the combination of blood and chocolate is definitely something I want to explore further.

Overal I'd consider this a success, even with the texture not being what it should've been.

fresh out of the oven

tshewman

Pepijn - VERY nice! So Dracula's now going to be diabetic? ;-) Look forward to your further explorations!

Pepijn_31744

Definitely!

tshewman

Started small with using cow's bl in the aerated apple sorbet. Added 2 gms of a combo of apple pie spices (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom) to gel mixture before chilling. Is in the freezer right now (my supplier of dry ice ran out-bummer) and here's a pic of the pre-aerated texture. Had tomorrow's date try it (without telling them about the cow's bl), "it tasts like a savory apple pie" was the response I received. When I tasted it, it retained the textural lightness yet has allot of depth.....almost savory.

Pepijn_31744

@Henri, @SamuelG stumbled upon this video called 'Wild Game Macaron', thought you might enjoy!

Full disclosure, expect some graphic content

https://player.vimeo.com/video/72731714edit: just realised this video was already featured as midnight snack, oops.

tshewman

served the apple pie spiced aerated cows bl sorbet in a tomato leather cone. The tomato worked well in the top 1/2 but dominated as we ate our way down the miniature cone.

Pepijn_31744

Cool! What are those red flakes?

tshewman

Raspberry crumble. I was able to get some dry ice a few hours before meal time and wanted a contrast. So, I simply threw a few raspberries in a containers and smashed them before serving. Because of the uncertainy in obtaining it, I didn't thaw any blood to try the same with it. Would have been interesting though. How I long for liquid nitrogen. ;-)