- We feel pretty damn comfortable making sausage,
but one thing we don't know s*** about is boudin.
- We've tried and we have failed every time
to make this Louisiana classic sausage,
so we're coming to Piece of Meat Butcher and Restaurant
while we are in New Orleans
to learn how they do it.
Theirs looks amazing.
We know it's gonna be good.
Let's go make a boudin.
(upbeat music)
- Guys, thank you for having us.
We're at Piece of Meat,
still in f****** New Orleans.
I feel terrible.
Ben, you look great.
- I'm halfway dead.
- You guys are a whole-animal butcher shop.
Can you talk to us about making boudin?
- Boudin is very traditional Louisiana sausage,
mostly from around the Lafayatte area.
Its a pork-based sausage.
The liver goes in it as well
and then it's just basically the vegetables
you have in your refrigerator,
rice, then it's a braised, hot sausage.
- It's the same idea as like scrapple or goetta,
or any of those things.
- I'm excited to finally make it.
We messed around with it at the the shop,
but we're just like cracking open books
and trying to see what works.
We never had the real thing.
- It's also like one of the points of putting the rice
in it too, is you take a pretty small amount of meat,
you braise it, you add all this liquid in with
10 pounds of meat, you're gonna end up with
like 25 pounds of sausage.
- You cook it first. - Yep!
- And then you stuff it. - Yep.
- Ohhhh!
- Well, we've been getting that part wrong.
- We don't know, man!
(laughs) - We don't know!
- I mean, read a book. - Yeahhh!
- It gives you a lot... a lot of information!
- I thought we did!
- So, we're going to use the shoulders today.
- [Brent] Great, lets do it.
- I cut the feet off the pig first.
We just saw.
(saw sound)
- [Ben] So normally when we make sausage,
the shoulder is kinda perfect,
cause we want 70/30 lean-to-fat.
And that's usually what that is.
But since we're braising it down,
does that still make it the best cut?
Do you need that fat ratio?
- Yeah, you need to have the high fat ratio.
- You definitely, yeah.
So you traditionally have neck fat and belly ends
and back fat or whatever that comes off the pig
that doesn't stay on whatever retail cut,
all goes into the boudin.
You're actually just using trim off the pig,
probably closer to 60/40.
- Oh. Yeah - But yeah,
The fat content is super important for boudin.
- It makes sense with the rice.
- It all soaks to the rice.
It gives it that nice smooth texture.
The first thing that you add back in
from the braising liquid is all the fat off the top
before you add any other liquid in.
- That is so f****** smart!
It makes so much sense.
- Now we're going to skin the shoulder.
- Ah la la.
Bingo bango! - And you get a nice...
A nice square cut.
So you hit the top of the bone, yeah!
- Yeah, so we don't have to kinda worry about
sawing through that. And yeah.
- See? I'm learning things too.
- We're all learning things. - We're all learning things.
- It's a day of learning!
- Oooh! - Everybody's learning!
- Yeah!
- I can't stress enough how gorgeous that is.
The coloring of the muscles is gorgeous.
The deeper red, where you're just like "that's all flavor".
Some of the best quality pork I think I've seen!
Man you guys are really, you got a great farmer.
- I like watching other people do this.
- I know, it's fun right?
- Yeah!
- I love watching Ben work.
Doesn't happen very often.
- Cool, shoulder blade and then we're good to go?
- Yep! - Yep!
- Bingo bango!
- So is boudin something that you guys actually
consistently make? - We...
- At the shop?
- We do not run out of boudin.
People drive to Opelousas and Scott, Louisiana and like
drive 3 hours, buy 20 pounds of boudin to bring home.
And people seem to like our boudin,
and they don't feel like they have to drive 3 hours anymore.
- Cool.
- It's awesome. - It's pretty cool.
- Really good, it's a fast sausage to make.
You just don't run out.
It's also not good for our bank account...
- [Ben] Supply and demand? Yeah.
- When we run out, so...
- What's like the thing that they're going home and making?
- The way that a lot of people do it is
they'll put it in the bag,
boil water, and drop the sausage in the water,
and steam, basically, the sausage.
But when you eat the sausage,
you don't eat the casing and it's like...
sucking meat out of a condom.
To be crass like this, I'm sorry.
- [Ben] I'm familiar with this.
(all laughing)
- So the way that we do it is either we just heat it up
in the oven or on the smoker outside.
And you eat it with whole grain mustard and sweet pickles.
And that's how you eat boudin.
- That sounds good. - Yeah.
- Do I dice this whole thing? - Yeah.
(music)
- I think when we made boudin in the past,
which I almost want to just start saying
it was not boudin...
- Right.
- What we sell at the shop in New York,
it really doesn't sell.
- Then we're like "I guess boudin's really drying out!"
- Family meal! Hope everybody's pretty happy!
- How can we put this on a bun?
- Nobody cared.
- What's the next step?
- Spice mix, vegetables.
- So is this kinda what would traditionally go
into the braise?
Or you guys are just kinda like whatever,
just like you were saying whatever's around?
- Most traditionally, it's going to be the Cajun trinity.
So, onions, celery, bell peppers.
I'm just going to dump these vegetables on top of the meat.
And then we're going to get our spice mix together.
- Okay.
- That's going to take care of that.
All right, the kosher salt: 20 pounds of pork.
- Let's agree, this is not a healthy thing.
You realize where you've been all week.
- Big dose of salt, big dose of black pepper.
- Yeah, black pepper! - Uhmm some spices...
- I love black pepper; I hate white pepper!
- Some cayenne...
- Disagree. - Really?
- I love white pepper.
- It tastes like plastic. - You love white pepper?
- Yeah. - Since when?
- I've always loved white pepper, it's just like...
- No you haven't!
You just decided to get interesting on me last night?
(laughter)
- Paprika. We do put white pepper in anyway.
Dried thyme. And a little of pink salt.
- That is a lot of salt! - That is a lot of salt.
- And then, it just sits there.
(music)
- [Ben] Woohoo! That smells good!
- And add the chicken livers.
- [Ben] Oh yeah, get 'em the f*** in here!
- Let's go!
- 5 pounds of liver for 20 pounds of pork
is our ratio.
- So, why chicken liver?
- So it's always, there's always liver in it.
The reason that we do poultry instead of pork is
because I think the chicken liver gives you
that nice irony flavor,
but without being really overpowering.
- Pork liver is intense, that is true.
- So the marinade, we let it sit like this in the walk-in
for about 24 hours.
And then, we throw it on the stove
and just cover the meat with water.
Let it simmer for about 3 and a half to 4 hours
until the meat is just smashable
up against the side of the pot.
So now that the meat is braised,
it all looks nice and mushy.
You can see that thick fat layer on the top.
You just going to spider all the meat into the bowl.
Then we're going to strain the liquid.
- And you mentioned that the fat is going to be on top.
And we're going to want to reincorporate
that first into the rice. - Yeah, so when we strain...
- Yeah Brent, just have at it!
It's your f****** world, we're just living here man!
- It's one of the b...
Like unmixed boudin is one of my favorite flavors!
- That's very good!
- And you're not adding. It's just water.
The spices were already on the pork.
- Yeah, so the pork marinating overnight
gets all the meat nice, and salty, and flavored.
There's your big hunks of liver.
- That's a big hunk of liver.
And then we'll incorporate the fat into the rice.
- It's all going to...
We're going to put the rice in here first.
And then mix that up a little bit.
And then incorporate the fat in.
And when that gets done at the end,
we'll just strain the last bit out.
All the spices are going to sit down at the bottom,
and we want to get all those back into the sausage.
- Man, the smells this thing is putting off is amazing!
- It's one of the b... like the...
Just... And taste a piece of just the braised pork.
And just the smell of it is so lovely.
- All that spice in the bottom of the...
- [Brent] Add that back in?
- Add that back in.
- And then, how much of this are we going add back in?
- We're going to see.
- All right.
- It's uh... Just wait and see.
- We're going to see how much the rice needs.
- Like you can see the layer of fat
that's sitting on top of it.
- Yeah.
- So first, we're going throw just the meat onto the mixer.
- [Brent] Okay. - And whip it up.
And then, we'll add the rice and the liquid.
(music)
- So we're just going to give it a little spin for a minute.
Get everything nice and happy.
- [Ben] How long did it take you guys
to develop this recipe?
- We got real sick of boudin for
a couple of months before we opened.
- [Ben] Yeah.
- We found that we just like stuck with the basics.
We've added a lot more heat to it.
And then it was just like make it, try it, test it, eat it.
(music)
- Fresh green onions going in.
- Is this a traditional thing?
- Parsley, green onions, like maybe some fresh garlic
or something like that is pretty common.
- We're going to throw in probably half of this liquid
or so to start with, just to make everything nice and loose.
- [Brent] Half!
- And then we're going to add our rice.
- Is all of this rice going to make it in there?
- Yes. - Yes.
- [Ben] So you mentioned earlier wanting to get that fat
back in and just get that to be
the first thing that's absorbed here?
- Yeah, so if you add too much of the liquid
in the beginning or just the plain braising liquid,
you're just going to end up with a soggy,
wet type of boudin, where the rice and the meat
will soak a lot of that fat back up
and without making it too greasy.
But the flavors in the fat...
You want all that fat back in there.
- Yeah also, I mean we braised it all out.
- Yeah, you have to add it back in.
- And you need that in there one way or the other,
otherwise the texture is just going to be s***.
- Yep. - This is the first sausage
where it's about to be stuffed,
and everybody's just like "just give me a f****** fork."
- This, like...
I'm really sick of a lot of things that we make.
I'm sick of eating a lot of things that we make.
Like fresh warm boudin in a bowl,
I'll never be tired of... I don't think.
- Ohhh so good!
- All that salt in there is almost too salty.
The spice comes creeping by the end.
- I can't believe it's not too salty!
- 250 grams for every 20 pounds.
- For 20 pounds for us, we do 160 grams.
- Boudin is the only thing we season like that.
- Like that? - Yeah.
- Now I'm getting this now.
I'm getting more excited about it,
cause like honestly,
I want fried eggs.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, I can see the applications for it.
And like that s***'* exciting, guys!
We still have to make a sausage, Ben.
- Or you can just sit there an eat the whole bowl.
It's less you'll got to pump.
- Okay, I'll just get one piece.
(laugh)
- Now we load her up. Makes a lot of great noises.
The importance of pumping the sausage while it's hot
is to get the heat to basically set the raw casing.
So I find that when you cook a sausage,
the casing shrinks and tightens around the sausage
as it cooks. So when you pump this hot,
it forces the casing, the heat of the boudin forces
the casing to tighten around it.
I've never cased anything else hot before.
Who wants to pump boudin?
Or would you like us to go first?
- I would love to.
(music)
- [Ben] Oooh! This is so warm!
It's steaming!
And then we're just going to link it like regular sausage?
- Yeah.
Look at the way that they fold their sausage
in order to get all the links to be...
- We do it also, so that each link
- Is exactly the same!
- Well is the same length as the sheet tray.
- Wait, we've been wasting a lot of time!
- A lot of time! (laughs)
(music)
- Hopefully we didn't do a terrible job of casing these!
- Oh yeah, you've been great! - You've been doing great!
- How do you prepare it
now that it's actually in the casing?
I've never stuffed a hot sausage before.
- So we usually let it sit overnight
just so to firm up really nice.
And honestly, we just throw it in a 375 oven for 4-5 minutes
until it's steamed all the way through.
Serve it with B&B pickles and some whole grain mustard.
- Lets eat that! - Yeah
- Pickles and mustard and sausage, yes!
This is it! - Yeah!
- This is it?
- Don't f*** around! Sausage on the plate!
Lets eat it!
- Yup! - [Ben] Brent cut!
- Cutting it!
Well this is fun!
- Cuts really even and it's really easy to cut.
- Well let's eat it!
(music)
- Wow, so the texture really is all kinda melded.
All that fat getting in the rice is like very nice.
That mixed with the pork and the chicken livers is
kinda like on the same road now.
That's really, really good.
- The salt really leveled out.
It's nice and spicy.
I love the liver, cause it just has
that little bit of an ironiness.
But we're not making pate,
so it actually stays really subtle,
and you taste all of the rest of spices,
and the pork itself.
The crispy skin is so delicious.
I don't know.
The combination of all of those things
is amazing and not many foods actually have it.
- It takes so good.
- Thank you.
- Most importantly, we didn't have to
suck it out of the casing, which I really appreciate it.
- No, we couldn't do that to you.
- I don't think I understood exactly what boudin
actually was.
It is completely different than andouille.
Don't put it into something, because it doesn't need to be.
It's a meal on its own.
- Thank you for showing us! We've been f****** up for years.
And now I know why. This is great.
- Find another way.
- [Brent] This is amazing.