Janie Burns of Meadowlark Farms in Nampa is bringing boudin to Boise. If you don’t already know, boudin is a much loved, meat and rice sausage you’ll find all over Louisiana’s Cajun country.
Janie Burns's lamb boudin © Guy Hand 2009
Janie has been working on the recipe with sausage maker Lin Hintze of Big Lost River Meats in Mackay, Idaho and they’ve just about got the recipe down. Janie was giving away samples at the Capital City Market on Saturday to get some feedback before beginning to sell the final product. Here’s a little audio of Janie Burns explaining her path to boudin.
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Janie Burns: “Well the boudin is a Louisiana sausage that has unusual ingredients. It has rice and lamb, peppers and some different spices. It’s a new introduction. I’m giving it away today to some of my select customers so they can try it and tell me if they like it and then when I do a bigger batch, I’ll have the recipe down.
In working with Lin Hintze of Big Lost River Sausage, he is always coming up with great ideas that when he goes to sausage conferences and perhaps talking to his fellow sausage makers around the country, he comes with lots of ideas and so he and I like to collaborate on new kinds of sausage. And he does all the specialty sausages that are locally done in this area.
It’s not a sausage that I’m really familiar with and so I have a few customers that I know are from Louisiana and I’ve given them Trial 1, this is now Trial 2 because we didn’t quite have the sausage right and now I’m going to solicit their opinion actively. But also my clientele is not people from Louisiana, it’s people from Idaho so I’m going to have to balance their regional affiliation with this sausage with the tastes of Idaho.”
Janie Burns © Guy Hand 2009
By the way, there’s a great article on the search for the perfect boudin called “Cajun Country by Car” by Thomas O. Ryder in the November 2007 issue of Food & Wine. The story is included in the anthology Best Food Writing 2008 too. Donald Link, the renowned New Orleans chef, also talks about boudin in his new cookbook “Real Cajun.”
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture.
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