UNTIL THE EARLY 1970s, when Chef Paul Prudhomme began teaching the gospel of South Louisiana cuisine, boudin, tasso, andouille, and cracklins weren’t well-known outside the area. These pork-based items were typically prepared during a boucherie, a communal slaughtering and butchering of a fattened hog, in which participants received their share of the meat.
Too many years ago to count, I remember boucheries that were held two or three times each winter at my Grandfather Broussard’s farm near St. Martinville.
After the pig was slaughtered, family members, friends, and farmhands gathered at long wooden tables and worked feverishly throughout the day making boudin, chaurice, andouille, and fresh pork sausage. The trimmings were cut into strips, much like jerky, dried, then smoked. (This was the forerunner of what we now know as…
