A blood sausage is a sausage filled with blood that is cooked or dried and mixed with a filler until it is thick enough to solidify when cooled. Most commonly, the blood of pigs, sheep, lamb, cow, chicken, or goose is used.
In Europe and the Americas, typical fillers include meat, fat, suet, bread, cornmeal, onion, chestnuts, barley, oatmeal and buckwheat. On the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin America and Asia, fillers are often made with rice. Sweet variants with sugar, honey, orange peel and spices are also regional specialties.
In many languages, there is a general term such as blood sausage (American English) that is used for all sausages that are made from blood, whether or not they include non-animal material such as bread, cereal, and nuts. Sausages that include such material are often referred to with more specific terms, such as black pudding in English. Other varieties of blood sausage include boudin rouge (Creole and Cajun), rellena or moronga (Mexico) and sanganel (Friuli).
Africa
Mutura is a traditional blood sausage dish among the people of central Kenya, although recently its popularity has spread throughout Kenya. It is made with meat, blood, and spices all encased in the animal's intestines or stomach. In Kenya fillers include fresh minced goat, beef, and mutton, fat, and red onions.
Nowadays many types of mutura, especially commercial street food versions, do not contain blood. The meat used in the filling can be any fleshy part, but like any other type of sausage, prime cuts are not ordinarily used for the stuffing. Instead the tougher, leaner cuts – for example the neck – are trimmed off the bone. The casing for the stuffing is the stomach sac and larger intestines. These are flushed many times with water to clean them.
The meat for the stuffing is finely chopped or minced, and the mandatory fat is often trimmed from other parts. The meat is slightly fried, mixed with finely chopped red onions, salt and optionally fresh chili. Other additions include freshly chopped coriander (dhania or cilantro), garlic, pepper and even beef stock. This is then mixed thoroughly with the fresh blood from the animal, and stuffed into the stomach and intestines, with the openings sewn or tied together with string.
The sausage is boiled in a large pot (often with other parts of the animal not roasted and used to make soup) for 30–45 minutes, and roasted over coals till brown. Sliced, it is served with kachumbari, an onion based salad consisting of tomatoes, red onions and fresh coriander, a bit of chili and squeeze of lemon. The accompanying starch is ugali.
Americas
North America
Caribbean
In Antigua, rice pudding is a local delicacy and it is prepared the same way as blood sausage.
In Barbados, blood sausage, also called pudding, is made with sweet potato (batata), pig's blood and onions, seasoned with peppers and other herbs and stuffed in pig intestines. Traditionally pig's blood was used to darken the mixture but Browning sauce (caramelized sugar) is sometimes used as a substitute. It is normally served with souse, which is pickled pig's feet, pig's ears and other trimmings. The cooked meat is cut into bite-sized pieces and soaked in a brine made of water, lime juice, cucumbers, hot pepper, and specially prepared seasonings. Blood sausage and souse, more commonly known as pudding and souse, is a Bajan delicacy usually prepared on weekends and special occasions.
In the French Antilles, boudin créole, or boudin antillais is very popular, this being the French boudin noir with local Caribbean chilli and other spices.
In the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, blood sausage is known as morcilla. Puerto Rican blood sausage is made with rice, culantro, cilantro, garlic, and Cubanelle pepper. Some contain paprika and annatto. Morcilla is especially popular during Christmas.
In Trinidad and Tobago, the local style of blood sausage is heavily seasoned with local peppers and traditionally prepared from pig's blood, often replaced by pig's liver today. It is sold by local producers as a popular accompaniment to rolls of crusty hops bread or served as an accompaniment to trotter souse, a stew based on trotters.
Central America
In Panama, blood sausage is called morcilla, rellena or tubería negra, and is usually filled with rice. In El Salvador and Nicaragua, it is called "moronga". In Honduras both "moronga" and "morcilla" are used.
Mexico
In the Yucatán Peninsula, morcilla is made exclusively from pig's blood and once deep fried it is served with a mix of pickled onions, cilantro and spices. It is always consumed in the form of tacos and paired with fresh habanero peppers.