Boudin Blanc sausage recipe

The traditional boudin blanc is a moist, white sausage made with a mixture of meat, eggs, starch, spices and milk or cream. The meat used to prepare a rich, authentic boudin blanc can be either pork, pork & veal or chicken.

This sausage has always been my white whale, my Moby Dick. I’ve tasted some amazing boudin blanc at some very nice restaurants and I’ve largely struggled to replicate the taste - maybe because the ingredients can vary so much from region to region, recipe to recipe, or maybe because it actually requires some attention to detail and patience?

This recipe is likely to be a moving target, as I’ll tweak it from time to time in my pursuit of boudin blanc perfection.

Please take a look at how-to-make-sausages, how-to-cook-sausages and the-science-of-great-sausages. These guides will apply to all the sausage recipes on this site and will provide you with a great primer!

• 350 g skinless chicken breast, chopped
• 3 slices bread  
• 5 tbsp milk
• 2 pinches of salt
• 4 egg whites
• 180 ml double cream
• 40g foie gras
• 6.5 g Black summer truffle, grated
• Pinch cloves
• Pinch nutmeg
• Pinch fresh thyme
• 1 meter hog casings

• Freeze the chopped chicken breast for about an hour (we are going to put them in the food processor and don’t wan’t this to heat them up too much)
• Soak about 1 meters of hog casings in warm water
• Tear the bread up and pour over the milk, so that it soaks it all up
• Place the chopped chicken breast and process until finely chopped (about 5 seconds)
• Add the whites and blend, it will first look like a liquid, and then will thicken up slightly. Stop once it has thickened (about 10 seconds)
• Add the milk soaked bread,  the foie gras, salt, truffle, cloves, nutmeg and thyme and process for another 5 seconds
• Add in the cream and process until a mousse forms.
• Stuff the mixture into the hog casing, twisting off 6 inch sausages
• Add these sausages to a pan of cold water
• Cover the pan with baking paper so that all of the sausages are submerged and heat slowly to 80c, and then hold them at this temperature for 20 minutes
• Remove the sausages from the pan, and dry with kitchen towel before pan frying gently in lots of butter