Duck Blood Cake From Scratch

This might be a bit beyond some modern western palettes (so if you’re squeamish, I suggest you stop reading now. You have been warned!) but duck blood and pig’s blood is a part of traditional Chinese and Taiwanese cuisine. Blood cake is a mixture of the animal’s blood and glutinous rice. For some reason, these days it’s almost impossible to buy pig’s blood cake in the supermarkets in NY (and instead, you’ll find a substitute–seaweed cake which is a poor imitation) but you can still get it at some hotpot restaurants.

I love it steamed or grilled, slathered with oden sauce, crushed peanuts, thick soy sauce, and cilantro, with a Togarashi shaker on the side. Or in hotpot, Mongolian, Szechuanese, sukiyaki, shabu shabu, what have you! You can normally find it as a tasty street food in Taiwan–especially at the night markets.

Just thinking about it is making my stomach rumble.

Today, we had to process two of my ducks–they both had bad frostbite on their feet this winter (the only two out of my flock, which, considering what temperatures had been like, isn’t too bad), which will eventually cause an infection, the limbs to fall off, and death. I had been hoping they would heal, but once their feet turned black, I knew I was only delaying the inevitable. Also, since they are kept in a mixed gender flock, they would likely be picked on and harassed the most by both their flockmates and the males, so I decided it would be more humane to process them (which I normally wouldn’t do for hens since I keep them for eggs.) I had never processed poultry before so I enlisted the help of one of the members of the local Facebook homesteading forum I’m on, and she processed them with me. It was a painful thing for me to do, but I’m glad I did it–I firmly believe that if I am to eat meat, I should be willing to do the hard parts of it too. I also believe that I should feel the responsibility for this animal’s life.

I dislike wasting any part of an animal, especially since it gave its life for our food and so I decided to do the most traditional form of blood cake–Duck’s blood cake. Duck blood cake, while it was the traditional animal to use, became too expensive (and chicken’s blood does not coagulate in the same way), so pig’s blood became the norm.

The problem is that I couldn’t find any detailed recipes on how to make it! Or at least any in English that I could understand (while verbally fluent in mandarin, my writing and reading comprehension is around a 3rd grader’s, probably less now that everything’s in simplified form). I had to call my mother, who, after getting over the initial shock of her daughter processing ducks, eagerly imparted what she knew about making it.

And here is what we came up with. It’s important that you soak the glutinous rice and have it ready when you’re bleeding the carcass–this way it doesn’t coagulate before you can mix it in.

Duck Blood Cake

• 1 cup glutinous rice (mochi rice)
• 5 cups hot (but not boiling) water
• 1 teaspoon non-iodized salt
• 1.5 cups fresh duck blood

1. Soak the glutinous rice in hot water and salt for 3 hours prior to processing the ducks.
2. Drain the water and place the glutinous rice into a large bucket in which the duck blood will be collected in.
3. Depending on your method, direct the duck blood stream into the bucket. Once the carcass has been bled out, mix the rice and the blood together (quickly so that the blood doesn’t coagulate into large pieces) and place into a crock.
4. Steam the crock/ramakin until the blood cake has just set (approximately 10 minutes), remove and cool. Slice right before use for hotpot, grilled, steamed, etc.

Taiwanese Night Market Duck Blood Cake Recipe

• 4 – 5 slices of duck blood cake
• Cilantro, chopped
• Crushed peanuts or Peanut Sauce (1 teapoon sugar, 2 tablespoons peanut butter, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 1 teaspoon chili paste, )
• Oden Sauce (1/4 cup water, 1/2 cup ketchup, 1/4 cup miso paste, 1 tablespoon chili paste)
• Thick Soy Sauce
• Sweetened Soy Sauce Broth (1/2 cup soy sauce, 4 cups water, 3 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon pork broth powder/1 pork bouillon)

1. Thread duck blood cake on bamboo skewers. Place into the simmering broth and cook until tender.
2. Remove, slather on sauces to your taste, top with crushed peanuts/peanut sauce, and garnish with cilantro. Serve hot!