Yes, morcela, also known as blood sausage or blood pudding, is indeed made with…blood. Typically pig. Now, before you start having flashbacks of the movie “Carrie,” people really do love it–my family is nuts for it. (I happily admit, I’m one of the only holdouts.)
When my father was growing up on the island of São Miguel in the Azores, my grandfather raised a pig each year. The slaughter, or matança, which took place in early December, provided food for all seven members of the Leite household for the entire year. Nothing was wasted, and that included the blood.
The morcela Azoreans are most familiar with contains no meat–just pork fat, blood, onions, garlic, and spices and is, understandably, quite rich.
But you can find morcela all over the country and in endless variations. In some regions, sausage makers make it with cloves, cumin, nutmeg, and/or pepper. In other areas, you can find morcela de arroz, blood sausage studded with cooked rice. Throughout the Alentejo, a region in the south of Portugal, producers prefer to cure their morcela by boiling rather than smoking. And if that weren’t enough, certain regions produce morcela with pork meat marinated in blood.
Morcela makes an appearance in feijoada (a stew of pork, sausages, and beans) and in cozido (a kind of a Portuguese pot au feu–a boiled dinner of meat, sausages, and vegetables). Cooks also prepare it fried, grilled, and sauteed and serve it with fries, rice, and eggs. In the Azores, morcela often shares a plate with fresh pineapple–one of São Miguel’s most famous crops.
Morcela (.75 pound), $5.99 from Portugalia Marketplace
Alheira (al-yay-dah)
Alheira is rare among the canon of Portuguese sausages. It’s one of only two created for political reasons. In 1497, King Manuel I of Portugal decreed all Jews in the country had to convert to Catholicism or face expulsion–to distant and unhospitable countries including former Portuguese colonies on the western coast of Africa. Many of the Jews who remained and converted, aptly called conversos, faced a dilemma. They wanted to secretly maintain their Judaic traditions and practices while outwardly looking like good Christian soldiers. One of the hardest traditions to keep was eschewing pork in a country that unapologetically worships the pig.
Every home had a small fumeiro, or smokehouse, and eyebrows would raise if no pork sausages were smoking. To escape notice and keep kosher, these conversos cleverly seasoned other non-forbidden meats, such as game and poultry, and bread with the same wine and spice combinations as chouriço and linguiça and then smoked them. Hostile neighbors, suspicious priests, and the authorities were none the wiser.
Nowadays, alheira is no longer kosher as it’s made from various combinations of pork, duck, chicken, quail, hare, and rabbit. Typically served fried or grilled with blistered, charred skin, alheira is beloved all over the country.
Yes, morcela, also known as blood sausage or blood pudding, is indeed made with…blood. Typically pig. Now, before you start having flashbacks of the movie “Carrie,” people really do love it–my family is nuts for it. (I happily admit, I’m one of the only holdouts.)
When my father was growing up on the island of São Miguel in the Azores, my grandfather raised a pig each year. The slaughter, or matança, which took place in early December, provided food for all seven members of the Leite household for the entire year. Nothing was wasted, and that included the blood.
The morcela Azoreans are most familiar with contains no meat–just pork fat, blood, onions, garlic, and spices and is, understandably, quite rich.
But you can find morcela all over the country and in endless variations. In some regions, sausage makers make it with cloves, cumin, nutmeg, and/or pepper. In other areas, you can find morcela de arroz, blood sausage studded with cooked rice. Throughout the Alentejo, a region in the south of Portugal, producers prefer to cure their morcela by boiling rather than smoking. And if that weren’t enough, certain regions produce morcela with pork meat marinated in blood.
Morcela makes an appearance in feijoada (a stew of pork, sausages, and beans) and in cozido (a kind of a Portuguese pot au feu–a boiled dinner of meat, sausages, and vegetables). Cooks also prepare it fried, grilled, and sauteed and serve it with fries, rice, and eggs. In the Azores, morcela often shares a plate with fresh pineapple–one of São Miguel’s most famous crops.
Morcela (.75 pound), $5.99 from Portugalia Marketplace
Alheira (al-yay-dah)
Alheira is rare among the canon of Portuguese sausages. It’s one of only two created for political reasons. In 1497, King Manuel I of Portugal decreed all Jews in the country had to convert to Catholicism or face expulsion–to distant and unhospitable countries including former Portuguese colonies on the western coast of Africa. Many of the Jews who remained and converted, aptly called conversos, faced a dilemma. They wanted to secretly maintain their Judaic traditions and practices while outwardly looking like good Christian soldiers. One of the hardest traditions to keep was eschewing pork in a country that unapologetically worships the pig.
Every home had a small fumeiro, or smokehouse, and eyebrows would raise if no pork sausages were smoking. To escape notice and keep kosher, these conversos cleverly seasoned other non-forbidden meats, such as game and poultry, and bread with the same wine and spice combinations as chouriço and linguiça and then smoked them. Hostile neighbors, suspicious priests, and the authorities were none the wiser.
Nowadays, alheira is no longer kosher as it’s made from various combinations of pork, duck, chicken, quail, hare, and rabbit. Typically served fried or grilled with blistered, charred skin, alheira is beloved all over the country.
