Will Americans Get over Their Fear of Eating Animal Blood?(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
Will Americans Get over Their Fear of Eating Animal Blood?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/t-magazine/animal-blood-food-restaurants.html
9 comments
Sitting on a British Airways flight heading to NYC, tucking into a full-English which was tolerable but not great, I had a tap on the arm from the Japanese businessmen sitting on the same aisle, "excuse me -- what is this?" he asked pointing to the black pudding on his plate, "that's black pudding, a type of blood sausage" I replied, at which point he thanked me, turned a little pale and pushed the slices to the side of the plate.
If we're worried about wasting parts of the animal, in a typical hog the blood is maybe 10% of their body weight. Significantly more waste (by mass) is created during the trimming process. If you want to do your part, you can buy a pack of "bits and pieces" whenever you need to render a lot of fat and don't really care what it looks like in the end. These trimmings are in substantially greater proportion than the finished bacon you typically buy. So, if you're making something like a big batch of beans, you can get the exact same flavor profile for maybe 10% the cost.
Rendered bacon fat does not taste the same as rendered suet, since flavor from the curing and smoking comes along.
What is steak? It is flesh cut from the body of a dead cow.
When I eat black pudding it's because it is delicious and something I have grown up with. Fixating on where animal products come from is nonsense.
When I eat black pudding it's because it is delicious and something I have grown up with. Fixating on where animal products come from is nonsense.
The idea of eating pudding made out of blood sounds gross to me, but I love dipping chips in the juices that pour out of a cooked steak.
The juices in steak are not blood; they're primarily made up of water and myoglobin. The statement from folks that they like their steak 'bloody' is a misnomer.
fun fact: when baking, you can use blood in many of the same places where you might use eggs, since the albumin proteins in blood coagulate the same way. There's untapped potential here for some very interesting "red velvet" cakes.
Salt and Straw used to have a savory chicken liver and pigs blood ice cream during Halloween season.
Was tasty.
Was tasty.
Sorry. Right now we're working on developing the lost fear of fascism and radical Protestant Nationalism (N.A.R., Seven Mountains Mandate, 'dominionism', etc). We'll work on the blood thing later.