barley flour

Black pudding is a very classic Estonian peasant food. This food was typically prepared in the farm during holidays when a pig was killed. The blood was collected and made into a blood sausage or blood cake. Barley or rye flour was mixed with blood, and fried onions, lard, or bacon were added. The mixture was seasoned and kneaded into a thick dough, from which small cakes were formed, which were fried or boiled and eaten fresh, or boiled and dried and stored dried, and the cakes were placed in broth or in, for example, cabbage soup.
In reality, the story is not so simple with the Black pudding. It is one of the world’s oldest types of sausage, whose country of origin is believed to be England or Ireland, where it is made not only from pig’s blood but also from beef or sheep’s blood. The principle is the the same as in the case of the Estonian national dish, blood was mixed with flour, lard, or bacon, barley groats were added and a consistency was made into a sausage shape, which was sliced and shaped or boiled before eating.
Nowadays a fried black pudding is one of the obligatory parts of the English breakfast

I prepared the dish using dried blood powder, barley flour, high-quality smoked bacon, and fried onions. Dried blood powder is available in the Farmer’s Store. I seasoned the blood cake with marjoram, red, black pepper, and sea salt.

Preparation time: 1 hour
Level: medium
Amount: about 1.5 kg of black pudding

Ingredients:
350 g of dried pig blood powder
700 g of barley flour
3 large onions finely chopped
500-600 g bacon cut into strips
1.5 tablespoons of marjoram
1 iron spoon of oregano
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
About 2 tablespoons of sea salt

Preparation:

1. Mix barley flour and blood powder, add spices, and mix lightly.
2. Cut the bacon into strips and chop the onions. Fry the bacon until crispy, add the onion, and fry for about 5 minutes with the bacon. Do not remove the fat. Fat makes black pudding tasty, it adds extra fat, but I tried to make a version of blood cake with slightly less fat.
3. Pour the bacon and onion mixture with the fat into the blood cake mixture, and add about 500 ml of water. Do not add water all at once, just mix the cake batter. It must be firm, not liquid. If the dough is too dry, add more water.
4. Spread cling film on the work surface, divide the blood cake dough into three parts, and shape it into a sausage shape using the cling film. Alternatively, you can form cutlets from the dough and boil them in salted water. During the cooking, the water shouldn’t boil vigorously so that the cutlet would not fall apart. The finished black pudding rises to the surface of the boiling water. I didn’t make cutlet-shaped black pudding, I shaped the sausage according to the English custom, letting it turn firm in the fridge, cutting the slices, and frying them. In Estonia, if black pudding was boiled in water, sometimes the black pudding boiling water was drunk along with the meal, the food-wasting was not acceptable.
5. To fry the cakes, heat oil in a pan on medium heat, cut slices about 1 cm thick from the end of the blood cake and fry on both sides for about 3-4 minutes until the cake turns crispy.
   Serve black pudding with sour cream or melted butter.
   Ready!!