Boudin and green onions

Boudin (or something like that) is one of several Cajun sausages and one that is particularly popular in southwest Louisiana. Descriptions of it aren't great--any time a sausage has a filler, I start to have doubts about it's eddibility and Boudin typically includes rice--but we hope to be tasting some and are assured that some are quite flavorful and pleasantly spicy. Research on them, though, revealed something unexpected, and made me wonder if the "big three" referenced with Gumbo and Jambalaya weren't different than I thought, because several recipes and commentaries specifically called for "green onions" as a key ingredient, and I know green onions are generally popular in the south.

Green onions, in case any readers are unaware, are quite different than regular onions, and might almost be considered onion sprouts, though believe that a different variety is also used used from the typically white or yellow onions that are grown until fully developed. The bulb part of green onions are eaten, but su is the softer part of the green stem, sometimes quite a lot of the stem is tender enough to eat and they are typically, in my experience, served raw. Salad bars often included them but they are more like celery and carrot sticks - intended to be eaten by themselves. The taste is pleasantly sharp and complex and this is the first encounter, besides a couple of the Gumbo and Jambalaya recipes, of using green onions, specifically, in a cooked food.

The rest of the ingredients, besides pork, seemed to be variable and so Boudin can be as generic a term as "sausage" and seems to have as nearly wide a range of variations as German sausaage, though German sausage seems to have more specific names. I look forward to tasting some. While I don't plan on making any stuffed links, I may be playing with some rice and pork cassaroles with a Cajun or Creole twist when I get home from vacation. Watch here for results.