Blood Sausage from Beasain — Basque Country, Spain

Blood sausage from Beasain is a Basque morcilla built on cooked rice folded through fresh pork blood and rendered pork fat, seasoned simply with salt and black pepper and packed into natural casings. It cooks to a dark, almost black sausage that is soft and slightly grainy inside, quite different from the drier, paprika-heavy chorizo-style sausages found further south in Spain. The sausage is reported from Beasain, a town in the Gipuzkoa province of the Basque Country long known for its pork butchery, where household and small workshop production supplied local markets and pintxo bars. Blood sausages of this rice-bound type are common across northern Spain, but Beasain's version is specifically associated with the town and sold under its name in the wider region. To make it, rice is parboiled and cooled, onion is softened slowly in pork fat until sweet, and both are mixed with fresh blood, more diced fat, salt and pepper. The mixture is spooned into casings, tied off into links, and gently poached in water just below boiling until firm, then cooled. Before eating, the links are sliced and pan-fried or grilled so the skin blisters and the inside turns creamy. What distinguishes this version is the use of rice rather than only onion as the main filler, giving a firmer, less crumbly bite, and a comparatively restrained seasoning that lets the blood and rendered fat carry the flavour instead of heavy spicing.