To know how to make Vanderbilt’s blood sausage, the first thing that you need to do is – shed off all your fears and senses of goriness. In recent times, blood sausages have been popularized in many countries like Germany, Spain and France. Blood sausages are basically a kind of link sausage made of pork (or even other meats) and are mixed with blood.

Making Vanderbilt’s blood sausages is not an easy process. Hence, if you really want to know how to make Vanderbilt’s blood sausage, follow the instructions below:

1.    The fat back, bread crumbs and apples are the key ingredients that give the sausage its texture and its skeleton. Make a mixture of these and keep aside.
2.    Next, the body of the sausage – this comes from the meat of the cooked pig’s head. Place this shredded meat in a separate bowl and keep aside.
3.    Now the spirit of the sausage – that comes from the quatre spice that you need to add to the ingredients and mix well. Quatre is a spice mainly used in France and is made up of individual spices like nutmeg, cloves, ground pepper and ginger. These spices enhance the flavor as well as the aroma of your sausages.
4.    Mix the meat and this mixture together so that they blend well.
5.    Add some fresh pig’s blood to the bowl of meat that you had kept separately. Adding the blood gives the sausages their distinctive dark red color, the key feature responsible for making Vanderbilt’s blood sausage stand out from others.
6.    Now measure and cut the sausage casing carefully and tie one end of it with a twine.
7.    Stuff the casing with the mixture created. Ensure that there is no air inside the casing. This is an important step because the presence of air affects the sausage. It creates small air pockets in the casing, which in turn do not let the sausage be smooth. As a result, your sausage does not remain in one piece and falls apart when you cut it. Thus, always ensure that there is no air present in the sausage casing.
8.    Once the sausage is packed well, place it in boiling water and cook for some time.
9.    Slice them into small rounds and serve hot on plates. Garnish the pieces with parsley, watercress, apples and walnuts.

Many consumers may find Vanderbilt’s blood sausages to be offensive and distasteful, especially because of the blood content in them. Vanderbilt’s blood sausages, at times may come with a metallic taste, which people generally associate with the blood taste. However, when cooked properly, the sausages lose their metallic taste and instead offer a rich complex flavor of lusciousness, which is not only delicious when eaten alone, but also when complemented with soups and stews. Thus, making Vanderbilt’s blood sausages - and some perfect ones - needs a lot of skill and practice. But if you can master the technique, then you surely will be able to come up with some perfect sausages.

Photo Courtesy: images.huffingtonpost.com