boudin balls – Hungry for Louisiana

Boudin, Cajun, Hungry for Louisiana, Local, Louisiana, Southern

Gameday boudin balls

Boudin links are great. We all know that. But boudin balls are better, because as we also know, what pork and rice really need is to be deep-fried.

This weekend, as LSU fans across the state prepare for the game against Auburn, many of them will stock up on Cajun charcuterie’s greatest guilty pleasure. Whether you tote your boudin balls to a tailgate party in a grease-stained paper bag, or on a behemoth disposable platter gilded with parsley, boudin balls are the pinnacle of gameday finger food.

Cajun, Road Food, Southern

Driving under the influence

For many of us, the holidays cue road trips to see family members reachable by car, but in Louisiana that also means entering the orbit of the dozens of Cajun meat markers that line certain stretches of road. Many of us are in the habit of pulling in on two wheels and stocking up on smokehouse pork sausage, hogshead cheese, fresh boudin, cracklins and boudin balls to take home, deliver to lucky folks or scarf down while driving.

Our routine includes stopping at Kartchner’s in Krotz Springs, Louisiana en route from Baton Rouge to Alexandria, where my husband’s family lives. A requisite order here includes three each of the boudin balls – pork, crawfish and jalapeño-cream cheese. We also nab a few ounces of cracklins, root beer all around and lots of napkins.

It’s not a road trip without a grease-stained brown paper bag.

I tend to be a purist – favoring the pork boudin balls – but I’m in the minority.

My husband and daughter like crawfish best, while my 10-year-old son is a consistent jalapeno-cream cheese guy. His obsession with them got me thinking: How long has the jalapeño-cream cheese boudin ball been part of the Cajun meat market experience, anyway? Look around the refrigerator cases at most of these roadside gems and you see jalapeño and cream cheese stuffed in all manner of items. It’s just one of many ways you can get your meat doozied up by the heavy handed Cajun butcher. Few things on the menu aren’t deep fried, seasoned to oblivion or stuffed with cheesy-fatty-spicy goodness. At some point, one of these meat masters decided to take the ingredients of the jalapeño popper and stuff them inside whatever was close by – a pork chop, a boudin ball, a butterflied shrimp – and it became standard fare.

Do you have a sense of when this started? Or do you have a favorite menu item you’d like to share? Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you.