Verivorst

Ingredients

• Pig's blood700 ml
• Pearl barley400 g
• Pork fat — diced250 g
• Onions3
• Marjoram2 tbsp
• Ground allspice1 tsp
• Sausage casings — about 3 metres300 g
• Lingonberry jam — to serve300 g
• Butter60 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Boil the barley in salted water for forty minutes, to half done, and drain it.

   45 min

2. 2

   Render the pork fat to crackling, add the onion and fry it golden.

   18 min

3. 3

   Cool both the barley and the fat with onion completely, or the blood sets when they meet.

   25 min

4. 4

   Strain the blood through a sieve and mix it with the barley, fat, marjoram, allspice and salt.

   12 min

5. 5

   Rinse the casings and fill them two-thirds full, leaving room for the barley to swell.

   25 min

6. 6

   Tie the sausages every twenty centimetres and prick them in several places with a needle.

   12 min

7. 7

   Bake at 180 °C for forty-five minutes, dotted with butter, and serve with lingonberry jam.

   50 min

About the dish

The barley is parboiled and cooled before it meets the blood. Hot grain sets the blood and the filling turns lumpy.

The casing is not packed tight. Barley swells as it bakes, and a tightly filled sausage splits along its length in the first ten minutes.

Verivorst is Christmas food, and in Estonia it is eaten almost only in December. Lingonberry jam alongside is obligatory, and without it the serving counts as incomplete.

Worth knowing

• — The casing must be pricked. Steam from inside bursts it and the whole filling ends up on the tray.
• — Strain the blood twice. It carries clots that leave an unpleasant grain in the finished sausage.
• — Fry a test spoonful before filling. That is how the salt and spices are checked; a filled sausage cannot be corrected.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

26 g

Fat

38 g

Carbs

42 g

More from Estonia

• Mulgipuder — A mash of potato and pearl barley with pork crackling. An Estonian dish recognised as a national symbol.
• Kama — A dessert of roasted mixed-grain flour stirred into kefir. Estonian breakfast and summer pudding at once.
• Kohuke — A curd bar in chocolate glaze, the Estonian dessert from the fridge.