Blood Pancakes Are The Most Metal of All Flapjacks

January 16, 2017 9:29 PM

On their own, blood pancakes end up being a savory dish, so many recipes call for enhancing the natural flavor by adding things like onions, spices, bread crumbs, and molasses. The only other body-fluid-specific requirement is to strain the blood to remove any clots that may have formed. Which really hammers home that you’re cooking with blood, in case you forgot.

Wikipedia: Blood As Food
Suggested soundtrack: Bad Blood Pancakes

posted by Johnny Wallflower (32 comments total)

I have a reeeeaaaaaalllllly bad aversion to blood as food. Nonetheless - I would totally try these pancakes, perhaps some Italian chocolate blood pudding to finish! Such is the severity of my food curiosity.
posted by helmutdog at 9:37 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Have I inadvertently stumbled into an Anthony Bourdain TV episode? This all seems very familiar....
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:57 PM on January 16, 2017

jfc I just started eating a sandwich, Johnny, y u do this to me
posted by Hermione Granger at 10:05 PM on January 16, 2017 [7 favorites]

I get the impression that "you can fool people into thinking it's chocolate!" is a blueprint for a wide swath of the humor of Sweden.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:41 PM on January 16, 2017 [8 favorites]

I had an aversion to blood in food. Then I tried black pudding. Problem solved.

Not a fan of pancakes, though...
posted by pompomtom at 11:06 PM on January 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

Well hello, I'm a Finnish vegetarian and this is literally the one and only thing that after years an years of not eating animals still sorely tempts me.

The pancakes don't taste of blood (or metal), just savoury and full of flavour. They're best eaten with really sour lingonberry jam. No, not that sickly sweet stuff Ikea sells. The real thing.

Also, we had cooking lessons at school and made blood pancakes once. Protip: having a bunch of 14 year olds cook with blood is a risky idea. Things will get written on walls.
posted by sively at 11:07 PM on January 16, 2017 [27 favorites]

Clonakilty black pudding with apple sauce. That's all.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:29 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

In addition to its health benefits, blood makes an excellent replacement for eggs in cooking, acting as a binding agent, and easily whipping up into a dense foam.

Blood meringue?
posted by Gordafarin at 12:54 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

sively: "Well hello, I'm a Finnish vegetarian and this is literally the one and only thing that after years an years of not eating animals still sorely tempts me."

What about your own blood, though? (Asking honestly.) I mean.. I just looked at this for the first time and my first impulse was to message a doctor friend to drain me a little.
posted by bigendian at 1:43 AM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Blood meringue


Book Two of the Bleeder Trilogy
posted by chavenet at 3:06 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

It is in fact literally the most metal of pancakes, when you consider the iron content in mammalian blood.
posted by ardgedee at 5:15 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

I would love this so much. At my local Vietnamese place, I almost always order bun bo hue, and the congealed blood is my favorite, favorite ingredient (aside from the broth, of course.)
posted by desuetude at 6:49 AM on January 17, 2017

A friend of mine who spent a couple of years making gourmet chocolate truffles once got the idea to make blood-flavoured ones. I think he was planning to use pigs' blood, but he got the idea after biting his lip while eating chocolate and enjoying the flavour combination. Chocolate goes well with plenty of savoury tastes, so it didn't surprise me too much. Unfortunately I never got to try them.

I was vegan then and am vegetarian now, and would be sorely tempted but also rather repulsed by animal-blood cooking. Human blood would be another matter, so long as the donor had been tested for blood-borne diseases. Part of me wants to say it's because of high-minded analysis about consent and ethics, but to be honest it's probably just that I've read too many vampire novels.

Anyway, I do like reading about sanguine cuisine, so thanks for the links.
posted by daisyk at 6:51 AM on January 17, 2017

I've made chocolate-based blood ice cream, following the Nordic Food Lab recipe. The end result was just a little too salty to be palatable (it also tended to melt quickly). The reviewers were generally of the opinion that it was interesting to have tried, but not very good.

I sourced the blood from a local heritage-breed pig farm that sells at a farmer's market. They don't normally sell blood, but they arranged to save some of the blood from an upcoming butchering. When I went to pick it up, the person at the stall reached into a cooler and produced an 80oz pickle jar hand-labeled "BLOOD". Carrying that around was a mixture of equal parts disconcerting and surreal.

Also, let me tell you, whipping blood into a foam by hand is just unbelievably gross. The color, the (surprisingly rapid) transformation from liquid to froth to foam...just terrible. At least it doesn't have much of a smell as long as it's cold.
posted by jedicus at 7:09 AM on January 17, 2017 [3 favorites]

Blood meringue

The Forbidden Dance
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:20 AM on January 17, 2017 [4 favorites]

This is one of those rare situations where you can use "irony" as an adjective.
posted by Jode at 7:37 AM on January 17, 2017 [11 favorites]

Yes! I will definitely try these if I ever make it to Finland.

I developed a bit of a fascination with French Style Boudin Noir for a while -- rich bloody goodness. The "Black Pudding" they have here in the UK is a poor substitute but if there is nothing else. Also don't mind a bit of Morcilla for a bit of spice with my blood, with some fresh broad beans or peas.
posted by mary8nne at 7:47 AM on January 17, 2017

Clonakilty black pudding with apple sauce

God yes. If smuggling meat products across international borders is wrong I don't want to be right.
posted by Damienmce at 8:37 AM on January 17, 2017 [1 favorite]

nope.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 8:49 AM on January 17, 2017

As a kid, my dad used to try to gross us out by telling stories about our Finnish grandmother coming home with a bucket of pig's blood from the local abbatoir to make pancakes with.

My adult palate could totally go for some of that.

One could be said to have sang for one's supper, yes?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:08 AM on January 17, 2017 [6 favorites]

In Edinburgh we found a cafe that served pancakes with roasted pears and black pudding. It was delicious. I think I had that three times from that place while we were there.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:27 AM on January 17, 2017

"The meal ends with a pig's blood fudge truffle coated in lavender. It looks like a truffle, and tastes like pig's blood coated in lavender.

Aska was born from the ashes of Frej, a $45 tasting menu pop-up at Kinfolk Studios in 2012. Berselius eventually changed the name to its current one, established it as a permanent-ish space, and received a Michelin star for, among other things, pig's blood crackers, pig's blood terrine, and sea buckthorn purees. But it closed in early 2014 to find a larger, more comfortable venue, a process that ended up taking bit longer than expected (it always does). Well now Berselius is cooking again. And the pig's blood is back —€” not just as dessert truffles, but as a sweet, funky, coagulated, rose-topped pancake."

Eater review of Aska in NYC
posted by praemunire at 9:32 AM on January 17, 2017

I remember trying my first blood sausage while visiting family in Germany when I was 9. Everyone at the table thought I was going to freak out, but I actually liked it. I drew the line at putting lard on my bread instead of butter, though, because it was too bland.

I was a weird kid.
posted by ananci at 12:04 PM on January 17, 2017

I was looking at some traditional recipes for Korean blood sausage (soondae) and thought the filling ingredients looked remarkably similar to, say, mung bean pancakes, except for using glutinous rice for the starch and the addition of blood. Note that cellophane noodles in soondae are a relatively modern innovation dating from the 1950's, post-war, when broken bits of cellophane noodles were added as a cheap filler.

There's also 선짓국 (seonjiguk, or congealed ox blood soup). The blocks of congealed blood develop holes when cooked at high heat, as in the linked picture. When cooked slowly over low heat the texture will be more custardy, with minimum holes, akin to chawanmushi.
posted by needled at 12:12 PM on January 17, 2017 [2 favorites]

Earlier this year I became interested in ways to cook and eat pork blood. I found this recipe for rice porridge with blood and dried shrimp.
posted by koucha at 12:22 PM on January 17, 2017

I remember trying my first blood sausage while visiting family in Germany when I was 9. Everyone at the table thought I was going to freak out, but I actually liked it. I drew the line at putting lard on my bread instead of butter, though, because it was too bland.

I was a weird kid.

A late Estonian uncle introduced me to blood sausage. What sold it was the fact he broiled it in the oven wrapped in bacon.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:49 PM on January 17, 2017

What about your own blood

good call, bigendian.
posted by dorian at 1:39 PM on January 17, 2017

The Nordic Cookbook by Magnus Nilsson has all sorts of blood recipes that I'm dying to try, as soon as I get my hands on some reindeer blood here in Wisconsin.


Any ideas?
posted by hafehd at 2:32 PM on January 17, 2017

One could be said to have sang for one's supper, yes?

ಠ_ಠ
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:49 PM on January 17, 2017

I don't know why but there's something about the use of blood in cake-like things makes me squeamish. I can handle blood sausage but I don't think I'd be able to take a bite of one of these. It's interesting because I'm usually one of the least squeamish-about-blood people I know (in fact, I LOVE getting my blood drawn and watching it fill up the little canisters -- it's just so cool!).
posted by treepour at 4:18 PM on January 17, 2017

Article: The traditional dish, known as veriohukainen in Finnish

Yeah no, nobody calls them that, but thanks for trying I guess.
posted by Soi-hah at 1:33 AM on January 18, 2017

My elementary school in the 1970s served only Finnish food, and we weren't allowed to bring lunches from home. Blood pancakes with lingonberry sauce were the only meal I, a very picky eater, liked. They don't taste bad. They also didn't look like that, at least not when made institutionally -- they looked like any old pancakes, but black.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:44 PM on January 18, 2017