Botifarra blanca
Also known as Butifarra Blanca
Catalonia, Spain
Catalan white cooked sausage.
Overview
Botifarra Blanca is a pale cooked pork sausage made without blood. Fatty pork, neck and trimmings are seasoned principally with salt and pepper, sometimes with nutmeg or cinnamon, then stuffed and cooked until tender.
Where it's from
The cut
How to recognise it
The sausage is beige-grey rather than bright white, in a straight or horseshoe form. Its cut surface is pale, lightly coarse and juicy, with visible lean and fat. Pepper should be clear but gentle. A rubbery emulsion, leaking fat or a grey raw centre is a fault.
- Casing
- Hog casing, 36 mm
Origins and history
Within the Catalan slaughter sequence, Botifarra Blanca was made after the fresh sausages and broad bulls but before the final black sausage. It used flavourful fatty cuts and trimmings that would bind into a tender cooked slice. Industrial production later spread it throughout Catalonia, but artisan examples still show the coarse, irregular texture of the butcher's kettle. The sausage also entered the festive calendar, appearing with Botifarra Negra, eggs and other rich foods on Dijous Gras, and in escudella and family meals throughout the colder months.
- Protection
- Unprotected.
- Seasonality
- The winter matanza.
Compare with. Botifarra
Serving and cultural significance
Serve cold with bread and tomato, slice it into charcuterie boards, add it to escudella or brown it briefly on a grill. On Dijous Gras it appears beside Botifarra Negra and eggs in the rich foods eaten before Lent.
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
- collar, belly and jowl blend
- Salt (%)
- 1.8
- Fermented
- No
- Smoked
- No
- Maturation
- cook and set
- Basis
- per 1000 g green meat
- Style
- Catalan white butifarra
Ingredients
- pork lean, neck (base)100% · 1000 g/kg
- back fat14.29% · 143 g/kg
- pork belly28.57% · 286 g/kg
- white pepper0.2% · 2 g/kg
- cinnamon0.1% · 1 g/kg
- nutmeg0.05% · 0 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