Overview
Botifarra Negra is the blood-enriched member of the Catalan botifarra family. Coarse pork trimmings, skin, offal, fat and blood are seasoned warmly, stuffed and cooked. It is a ready-cooked refrigerated sausage, not a fermented black pudding.
Where it's from
The cut
How to recognise it
The casing is brown-red to almost black according to the amount of blood. The slice is coarse and moist, with visible skin and fat in a dark matrix. It should smell of pork, pepper and warm spice, never of raw blood, sour fermentation or stale fat.
- Casing
- Hog casing, 36 mm
Origins and history
The sausage belongs to the practical order of the Catalan matança. Prime muscles were preserved separately, while fatty trimmings, skin, head meat, organs and blood were transformed into cooked sausages. Botifarra Negra kept the whole animal in use and gave winter soups and bean dishes depth. Its cinnamon, nutmeg and clove reflect an older Catalan spice cupboard, where warm aromatics were not reserved for desserts. It also became part of the rich Carnival table, particularly around Dijous Gras, when pork, eggs and cooked sausages were eaten before the Lenten fast.
- Protection
- Unprotected.
- Seasonality
- The winter matanza.
Serving and cultural significance
Eat it cold in thin slices, warm it on the grill, fold it into scrambled eggs, or add it late to escudella, beans and cabbage so it heats without disintegrating. Its role is both a sliced charcuterie and a seasoning for the pot.
Recipe and cure
This is not a finished recipe. It is a window into how this meat is traditionally cured. Before you follow any process, please run it through one of our curing calculators, so the salt, cure and timings are right and safe for your own batch.
Make this — the measured Curesmith version →The cure below is the traditional reference. “Make this” opens the measured Curesmith home recipe, scaled to your batch.
- Meat
- pork
- Cut
- pork, fat and onion with blood
- Salt (%)
- 1.73
- Fermented
- No
- Smoked
- No
- Maturation
- cook and set
- Basis
- per 1 L pig's blood (book basis)
- Style
- Catalan black (blood) butifarra
Ingredients
- Pork neck, heart, pork trimmings (base)100% · 1000 g/kg
- back fat25% · 250 g/kg
- Pork jowl, belly50% · 500 g/kg
- Pork liver12.5% · 125 g/kg
- Pork skins25% · 250 g/kg
- Pork blood37.5% · 375 g/kg
- Pepper0.19% · 2 g/kg
- Cinnamon0.1% · 1 g/kg
- Nutmeg0.1% · 1 g/kg
- Cloves, ground0.03% · 0 g/kg
- onion, chopped10% · 100 g/kg
Notes
- This is a cooked product. Cook thoroughly to a safe internal temperature and cool promptly; cooking does not kill botulinum spores, so keep the warm-holding window short and refrigerate.
In the Codex
What this product teaches, and where to read more.
Temple. Pillar, Hygiene Control