7 Bizarre Cuisines Made With Blood Around The Globe
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Eating blood: It’s not just for vampires! It’s been a culinary mainstay all over the world for as long as there have been humans. Many cuisines utilize blood, a rather bizarre ingredient, to cook dishes dear to the culture.
Variations of blood sausages and blood soups are quite common in Europe. Pig or cattle blood is allowed to coagulate under heat and turned into sausages using fillers like ground meat, fat, rice, bread, and barley. The Tuscan Biroldo is made with pig’s blood and offal and spices such as star anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, and fennel, while a sweeter version with pine nuts and sultanas has its origins in Pistoia.
Here are 7 Bizarre cuisines made with blood whose unforgettable flavors will make eating blood seem not so crazy after all.
1. French Coq au Vin
If you want to go the traditional route when it comes to France’s coq au vin, get ready for lots of chicken blood. This dish calls for an old rooster, red wine, mushrooms, garlic, bacon, and plenty of other appetizing ingredients. Back in the day, when people were living an entirely farm-to-table lifestyle (there were no other options), fresh chicken blood, rather than flour, was the main thickening agent used in coq au vin. Flour is mainly employed these days as fresh chicken blood isn’t as easy to come by as it used to be.
2. Blood sausage
Also known as black pudding is a sausage made with blood and any number of other ingredients like meat or cornmeal. (Not to be confused with haggis, which is Scottish sausage made with lamb heart, liver, and lungs.) If you cook the blood long enough, it will coagulate when it cools. Blood sausage is made all over the world. In Spain it’s called morcilla, in France it’s boudin nor, and China it’s xue doufou.
