Make blood sausage yourself - simple and delicious

Name: Make blood sausage yourself – simple and delicious
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h 40 min
Total time: 2 h 10 min
Yield: 1 kg
Cuisine: German
Ingredients: 400g pork back fat; 300g pork rind; blood (300 ml) fresh or made from blood powder; 20g salt; 2g black pepper; 1.5g marjoram; 1g ginger powder; 1g thyme; 1g allspice; 0.5g mace

In this post I show you how to make blood sausage yourself. There are several blood sausages all across the world. The variants are extremely diverse depending on the region you live in.

In this post I show you the (in my opinion) the simplest variant. It has 3 ingredients pork back fat, rind and blood to which a few spices are added.

If you don’t do the slaughtering yourself, it’s not so easy to get fresh pork blood. But don’t worry, you can also make a blood sausage without slaughtering yourself. I found blood powder on the internet, which you can mix with water or milk.

My basic recipe is of course possible with fresh blood as well as blood powder.

Here you can find the complete blood sausage recipe as a video or to read through.

Have fun and good luck making it!

Table of Contents

Blood sausage – What do you need to make it?

Ingredients per 1 kg

Ingredient	Grams	Percent
pork back fat	400 g	40 %
pork rind	300 g	30 %
blood (300 ml) fresh or made from blood powder	—	30 %

Spices per 1 kg

Ingredient	Grams
salt	20 g
black pepper	2 g
marjoram	1.5 g
ginger powder	1 g
thyme	1 g
allspice	1 g
mace	0.5 g

Sometimes I also add 75 g onion sweated in butter or lard

The equipment to make blood sausage

Meat grinder

A meat grinder cuts the meat into small pieces so it can be mixed with the seasoning. Cut the meat into pieces that fit the feed tube before grinding.

Filling sausage casings with a stainless-steel sausage stuffer

Sausage stuffer, grinder attachment or funnel

Use a sausage stuffer to fill the mixture into its casing. A stuffing attachment for your meat grinder or a hand funnel also works when you are starting out.

Artificial casings, jars or tins

You can fill the sausage into jars, tins or artificial casings. For jars, I usually use Weck jars. I recommend artificial casings, caliber 45/25 for a smaller diameter or 60/25 for a wider one.

For readers in the EU: you can buy these casings in my German shop. Artificial casings, caliber 45/25, 5 pieces, Artificial casings, caliber 60/25, 5 pieces.

Make blood sausage – Step-By-Step Instructions

Grind the spices in advance to a nice fine powder.

Cut the rind into strips. It is important that they fit into your meat grinder later. I recommend a really sharp knife here, because the rind is very difficult to cut.

Cook the rind for about 1 hour. The rind should be covered with water. It should not be mushy but soft after an hour. You should be able to easily push it through with a fork.

Meanwhile, cut the pork back fat into small cubes. The size of the cubes will determine the look of the sausage later on. Depending on how fine or coarse you want it, you can adjust the size here.

Put the fat cubes in a pot and cook them for 25 minutes. The cubes should end up soft but not too soft. When you press a cube with your fingers, it should yield but not turn to mush.

Grind the hot pork rind through the smallest perforated disc. From this point on, it is important to work reasonably quickly. When the pork rind cools down, it turns into a solid mass. Therefore, it is best to rinse your grinder once directly after grinding.

Now add the blood together with the spices to the pork rind and mix it well. It is best to heat the blood to approx. 30 – 35 C° beforehand (around 86–95 °F). This way it can be processed better and does not cool down the rind directly.

Add the fat cubes to the mass and mix them.

Now fill the blood sausage mass into glasses or artificial casings.

Depending on whether you used casings or jars, Now scald or boil down the blood sausage. Scald the artificial casings at 76 C° (168 Fahrenheit). Depending on how big your caliber is, the brewing time changes (caliber 40 = 40 minutes; caliber 50 = 50 minutes). If you used jars, you can boil them down at 100 C° for about 2 hours.

Your blood sausage is ready 😄. Enjoy it.

Frequently asked questions

What is blood sausage?

Blood sausage is a cooked sausage built on blood rather than on lean meat. The blood is the binder and it is what sets the sausage: mixed warm with cooked rind and fat, filled into casings or jars and then scalded, it firms up into a dark, sliceable sausage. It is one of the oldest sausages there is, for the simple reason that it wastes nothing.

Fresh pork blood is the traditional base. If you do not slaughter yourself it can be hard to get, and blood powder mixed with water or milk does the job. Mixed with milk you get a slightly lighter sausage. Either way the result is close enough that most people will not tell them apart.

Blutwurst, black pudding, morcilla – is it all the same sausage?

Same family, different kitchens. Germany calls it Blutwurst, and Rotwurst or Schwarzwurst depending on the region. Britain and Ireland make black pudding, Spain makes morcilla, France makes boudin noir, Turkey calls it kan sosisi. All of them are blood, fat and seasoning, cooked and set the same way.

What changes is the filler and the spice. Black pudding usually carries oats or barley, morcilla very often rice or onion, and the German versions lean on marjoram, allspice and mace, which is the route this recipe takes. Swap the filler and the spice mix and the same method gives you any of them.