Boudin (boo-dahn) is about as Cajun a dish as they get. Traditionally, boudin is a sausage stuffed with pork and rice. Recently, shrimp, crawfish, and alligator have been added to the list of meats used. Rice in a sausage may sound strange, but originally the rice was added to stretch the meat. Good idea, huh!

Since boudin seems to be a very popular search on Great Cajun Cooking, I decided to share making boudin here with you.

Things you will need that may not be normally found in your kitchen: a meat grinder and a sausage stuffer. My meat grinder has the sausage stuffer attachment; check yours. Many complain about the electric stuffers and recommend a manual stuffer. You can still find the old hand-crank stuffers throughout Acadiana. I'll still use my electric.

I started out with the recipe for Boudin, but like any good Cajun cook, I quickly modified it to my personal tastes.

For the boneless pork, I chose a nice pork tenderloin. It takes less time to cook if the meat is fairly tender to begin with. And instead of using the pork liver, I used chicken liver. I love chicken liver. It adds an interesting twist to the taste.

I prepared the pork and liver as stated in the recipe. It took about an hour to get the meat just right. You can see I used the meat grinder to grind the meats. The grinder was set a little too fine. In the future I'll make sure to use my coarse blade.

Next, I added all the seasonings to the meat stock. I used a little more onion and lots of cayenne pepper. I even added a teaspoon of garlic powder to the pot. I added the ground meat back into the vegetable-stock mixture. The smell in the kitchen was driving me crazy 'bout this point.

While the meat and stock was cooking down, I started cooking the rice. Now for the real fun: cleaning the casing and getting it onto the stuffer. I got a hank of casing from one of our local butchers. Almost all of them have it. I decided to go with natural casing. It is pre-flushed and cleaned hog intestines. You can go with a synthetic casing if you like. The casing is packed in brine and should be rinsed, but I felt more comfortable with a good cleaning and another flush. Then I loaded it onto the sausage stuffer.

Now I added the cooked rice to the meat mixture, and mixed it in pretty good. And it's on to stuffing it into the casing. You can see in the pictures this is no fun by yourself. My camera man had to help me out. I recommend one person working the casing and another working the stuffing, but it can be done alone. I twisted the casing every 12 inches or so to make links in the boudin.

After all the stuffing was in the casing, I placed all the boudin in a pot with enough water to cover and brought it to a boil. Once it started boiling I reduced the heat and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

We had some of it right then and there. It was delicious. Judging by the smiles it was some good boudin. I packed up the remaining boudin and brought it to work with me in the morning. There were many smiling faces. Boudin is the champion of breakfast where I work. Some eat it out of the casing, others cut it up and make a sandwich. Either way is great. By the time I got back to the office kitchen for another piece, it was all gone. Next time I'll double the recipe.

Let me know when you make some boudin, I'll be over to taste test it for you.