Boudin Blanc

500g chicken breast
500g lean pork shoulder
20g salt
3g white pepper
15g cloves
3g porcini powder
250g creme fraiche
3-4 eggs
30g parsley
hog casings

Buoyed up by the success of my Paysanne sausages, I decided to try my hand at making pre-cooked sausages. This complicates the process only slightly in that the ingredients are both minced and then blended in a food processor and that after stuffing, the sausages are simmered in water to pre-cook them before storage and re-heating to eat.

Cloves: The original recipe called for 1g cloves. The kitchen scale I used was not fine enough to cleanly differentiate between 1 and 2 grams so my sausages turned out a bit over-cloved - just right for Christmas. I think using 15 cloves next time will be better rather than the 20 I used here. Also, I didn't grind the cloves enough before adding them and I think it would be improved with a finer ground spice mixture.

Eggs: I used 4 large eggs and I thought that the sausages were slightly eggy. So next time I would use 3 large eggs or 4 medium eggs.

After blending in the food processor, the mixture becomes quite sticky, like gum. This makes stuffing into the casings harder work and another pair of hands would have helped. The result this time was that the casings became over-stuffed as I didn't have a hand free to correct the flow of meat into the casing. Many of the sausage casings split while simmering.

Overall a great success, though. These sausages have the slightly rubbery texture of frankfurters that I loved as a child. I couldn't decide if I preferred eating them fried or boiled. So I will have to make some more to settle that point