A Recipe for Goat Blood Fry

Blood fry is a side dish, like a thoran, meant to accompany rice and curry, or ragi mudde and curry. It can also be eaten with chapati. It is a dish that Dalit communities prepared to make up for the absence of meat — an unaffordable luxury. Blood fry is a simple dish, and cooks easily, but is also very easy to mess up. The tricky part is sourcing blood. Butchers don’t keep blood in their shops anymore, so they need a few days’ notice to get you what you need. The blood will remain red, but you’ve still got to wash it three times. My mom’s tip for cooking blood is to drop it into boiling water before frying it.

RECIPE: BLOOD FRY

Ingredients
250 gm goat blood
1 large (or 2 medium) onions
1/2 bunch coriander leaves
1/2 bunch mint leaves
5-10 garlic cloves (or more if that’s how you like it)
50 g ginger
Oil, to sauté
1 medium tomato
2-3 green chillies
Red chilli powder, to taste
Coriander powder, to taste
Turmeric, to taste
Garam masala (we love the Shakti Masalas or the chicken masala)
Salt, to taste

Method
Wash the blood, then cook it for a couple of minutes in boiling water. Cooking blood is similar to cooking paneer, tofu or kheema. You could crush it with your hand to give it the kheema/ egg bhurji texture or cut it into cubes as you’d with paneer or tofu after taking it out of the water.
Heat oil in a heavy bottomed wok, as you would for cooking any meat.
Add in the onion and fry until they begin to brown. Now add chillies, tomatoes. (My great grand aunt used to add dill at this point, you can too.)
But you should add mint and coriander leaves now.
Now you add salt, turmeric, chilli powder, garam masala. Mix well to combine.
Finally, add in the blood.
Mix it well, then cover the wok with a lid and allow to cook for 5 minutes.
Uncover and remove from heat. Serve hot.

Banner image credit: My Village Foods

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