Navajo Blood Sausage

Like the Irish, Scots, Scandinavians, Poles, Bohemians and others, the Navajos make blood sausage. Each group uses the materials at hand, whether oatmeal, wheat, rice or barley. In the Southwest, it’s cornmeal.

1 sheep’s stomach
1 quart fresh sheep blood
1/2cup stone-ground cornmeal
1 onion, minced
1/2 cup chopped green chile or hot yellow chile
1/2 cup stomach fat, chopped fine
salt and pepper to taste

Scrub the stomach well in cold water and turn inside out. Mix blood, cornmeal, onion, chile and fat, and add salt and pepper to taste. Put mixture in the stomach and tie off into baseball-size sausages. Leave some air space in each sausage to allow room for expansion. Cover sausage with water in large kettle and simmer for about 4 hours. Larry King, who shared this recipe with us, recommends that the boiling be done outside because the smell can become overpowering in a small kitchen.

From:
The Best from New Mexico Kitchens by Sheila MacNiven Cameron (New Mexico Magazine, Santa Fe NM, 1978)

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