Food - Drink
White Pudding Vs Black Pudding:
What's The Difference?
By LAUREN ROTHMAN
St. Patrick’s Day isn’t just a holiday that commemorates the patron saint of Ireland, Patrick, but it's also about parades, green-colored ale, and corned beef and cabbage. Another Irish recipe that's sometimes spotted on St. Patrick's Day tables is pudding, whether of the white or black variety.
White pudding is a grain-based sausage flavored with plenty of fat that is stuffed into a sausage casing. It typically uses oatmeal or barley, pork or beef suet, breadcrumbs, spices, and occasionally pork meat or pork liver, and it is traditionally part of an Irish breakfast.
Black pudding varies from white with the addition of plenty of beef or pork blood, making it a traditional blood sausage. Black pudding is made by mixing pig or cow blood with pork or beef suet and grain, and then stuffing the mixture into a casing.
The secret to making white pudding is to use a lot of fat by cubing fat back from a pig's back, and placing it in the freezer. Once it’s filled with grains, seasoning, flour, milk, and cornstarch, it’s ready to be stuffed into a casing and poached in simmering water for 35-40 minutes, until firm.
The difference with cooking black pudding is that you have to mix boiled and salted pork liver with lard and fresh pigs’ blood. Once the mixture is moistened, it can be packed into a casing, tied off in one-foot loops, and later enjoyed as is or pan-fried until crispy on the outside.
If you're celebrating St. Patrick's Day in the U.S. and want to pick up some white or black pudding for an Irish-themed feast, your best bet is to head to an Irish butcher to buy some that have been made fresh. If you live near heavily Irish cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, or Louisville, this task should be particularly easy to accomplish.