Surinaamse bloedworst: the traditional recipe and how to fry it

This is the classic pork version. It fills a few lengths of casing. Scale it to what you have on the counter.

• 1 liter fresh pork blood
• 250 g breadcrumbs (more if the mix stays loose)
• 2 large onions, finely chopped
• 1 to 2 tablespoons sea salt, to taste
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
• 1 thumb fresh ginger, grated
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 to 2 teaspoons dried marjoram
• Pork casings (varkensdarmen), rinsed and soaked

Strain the blood first so you have no clots left. Stir in the breadcrumbs, onion, salt, pepper, ginger, sugar and marjoram until the mix is thick but still pourable. It should coat a spoon, not run off it like water. Too thin, and you add breadcrumbs a handful at a time. Check the seasoning by frying a tiny spoonful in a pan, because you cannot safely taste raw blood mix.

Fill the casings and leave room, since the mix swells as it cooks. Tie them off in lengths. Lower them into water held just under a boil, around 80 to 85 C, and poach gently for 20 to 30 minutes until firm. Never let it roll at a hard boil or the casings split on you. When a needle comes out clean, lift them and let them cool all the way down. Cold bloedworst slices clean. Warm bloedworst falls apart in your hand.

Bloedworst is already cooked, so frying is about heat and crust, not cooking it through. Bloedworst bakken means one thing: a crisp edge and a hot, soft middle.

• Slice the cold sausage into rounds about 1 cm thick. Thinner crisps too fast. Thicker stays cold in the centre.
• Heat a little oil in a pan over medium. Not screaming hot, or the outside burns before the inside warms.
• Lay the slices flat. Leave them alone for 2 to 3 minutes until the underside is dark and crisp, then flip once.
• Another 2 to 3 minutes on the second side. You want a real crust on both faces.

Do not turn the slices over and over. One flip, that is it. Let the crust build. If a slice sticks to the pan, it is not ready to move yet, so wait. Serve it straight from the pan, hot, with sambal and a little zuur on the side. That is how it goes at the stall and at home. Peper en zuur, every time.

You can also warm whole lengths gently in a spiced bouillon, the toko way, and slice them at the table. But fried is where the texture wakes up. The breadcrumbs in the mix crisp at the edge in a way boudin noir never will.

Here is the part a lot of recipes skip over. The traditional Surinaamse bloedworst is pork. Pork blood, pork casing. There is no way around that for the classic version, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Plenty of Hindu and Muslim buyers avoid pork, so beef-blood and chicken-blood (kippenbloed) versions exist for exactly that reason. The method does not change: blood, breadcrumbs, onion, the same spice line, into a suitable casing, boiled. The Bijlmer worst stall in front of Slagerij Nico makes its sausages from beef on purpose, so Hindu and Muslim customers can eat there too. That is the real precedent. Not a marketing idea someone cooked up last year.

So if you cannot eat pork, bloedworst is not closed off to you. You want the beef-blood or kippenbloed version. Ask your toko straight whether their bloedworst is varken, rund or kip, because the answer changes from maker to maker. Our chicken version is made with 100% halal ingredients, 100% kip, no pork or beef.

Bloedworst rarely turns up on its own. It comes out next to vleesworst and kippenworst, all warm, all cut, with peper en zuur. At Kwaku Summer Festival in Amsterdam Zuidoost, which runs four weekends across July and August (11 July to 2 August in 2026), the worst stands sell it alongside bara, pom, roti and moksi alesi. At home it lands on a plate with rice, or fried and tucked into a broodje.

If you would rather buy it than boil your own blood, fair enough. Most people do. We make bloedworst the traditional way and sell it in 500 g and 1 kg retail packs, with bulk cartons for tokos, broodjeszaken and snackbars. The cold chain stays unbroken at -18 C, we work HACCP-compliant under EU approval NL208262EG, and we deliver DAP across the EU and UK. If you run a shop and want it branded or unbranded by the doos, the wholesale page on ratoulifoods.com has the pack sizes and the way to order.

Fry your own or warm a pack from the toko, the rule holds either way. Slice it cold, fry it hot, serve it with sambal. That is Surinaamse bloedworst the way it is meant to be eaten.