New Food #11... Blood Sausage

So... on Friday night I had the opportunity to try another new and.... interesting food: blood sausage. If you remember from previous blog, blood sausage was NOT something I was necessarily open to trying.... at all, but when confronted with new, albeit potentially disgusting, food Nana Mensah does NOT back down!.

So what is blood sausage... According to Wiki "Black pudding or blood pudding is a type of sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled. It is also called blood sausage.

Pig or cattle blood is most often used; sheep and goat blood are used to a lesser extent. Blood from poultry, horses and other animals are used more rarely. Typical fillers include meat, fat, suet, bread, sweet potato, barley and oatmeal."

So yeah... Blood Sausage is essentially exactly what it sounds like it is... Casing stuffed with a little meat, some fat and then filled with blood and poached until the blood becomes "solid". I didn't have my camera with me, but our dish looked pretty much like this..
Or this...


My thoughts?... I'm actually getting a little nauseous, again, looking at that picture so I'm gonna make this short. I am not exactly sure what makes sausage sausage (maybe just meat in a casing?), but there was nothing sausage-like about the consistency of this sausage. I would compare the consistency to that of really really REALLY soft, moist and crumbly liver.... like spongy and wet.... so crumbly that when you put your fork in it it just sort of falls apart...

The consistency was really difficult to get past.

I think if they had called it blood pudding, NOT put a casing around it and served it in a bowl I wouldn't have been expecting something solid to be entering my mouth and wouldn't have been so traumatized by the texture of the "sausage".

The actual flavor of the sausage wasn't too bad. If I remember correctly it was cumin-y, fennel-y and garlic-y... The taste was very rich and intense. I put a little bit on a piece of bread and it was FAR more palatable that way. Eating the mushy, livery, wet substance by the forkful was NOT the business... at least not for me.

I didn't eat too much of the sausage. As I was eating it, I could feel my stomach turning.... and the churning didn't stop for the rest of the night. I'm not sure if I would try blood pudding/sausae again, but I'm glad I was able to mark something else off of my "new foods" list and didn't suffer too much for it.