Crépinette is a flat meat sausage patty parcel wrapped in caul fat, so the difference to a regular sausage is that a crépinette is not wrapped in a casing.
Pork meat wrapped in caul fat is a specialty from France and I'm sharing my mum's traditional recipe.
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📕 What is Crépinette?
A Crépinette is a parcel of meat, that can be made of pork, beef, lamb, or wild game meat and which is seasoned with herbs and some spices.
The meat is then flattened into patties before being wrapped with caul fats.
The “net” of animal fat holds together the Crépinette patty and melts away as it is frying.
The fundamental difference to sausage is that no casing is used, but instead the caul fat to hold it altogether.
The preparation of Crépinette is still commonplace in France.
You can either buy them ready-made at a butcher or make your own at home.
My grandmother and mother would mince the meat finely before making the crépinette from scratch at home.
Crépinettes were mentioned in the 13th Century, so most probably the preparation with wrapped meat parcels might be much older than that after all.
That means the pork meat parcel is one of the dishes, which is still being prepared since medieval times.
Only the seasoning must have changed over the past 700+ years!
To prepare a Crépinette at home you can either grind your meat 2 times with a meat grinder (just as I do) or you can ask your butcher to do that for you.
In today's recipe, I used pork but you can pick another meat such as lamb, mutton, veal, beef, wild game, turkey or even chicken.
Making these french meat parcels is definitely worthwhile the trouble, alone because you get to season your own meat the way you like it.
📜 What to serve with Crépinettes?
Serve the Crépinette with rice, roasted vegetables such as this oven roasted Broccoli, sauteed mushrooms, baked potatoes, mashed potato or butter noodles.
To make a simple cream sauce to serve with the meat parcels, use the pan, where you fried the meat earlier, and melt about 1 Tablespoon of butter.
Add 1 Tablespoon of Tomato paste and about 100 milliliters of liquid fresh cream (about ½ cup) and season with salt and pepper.
We like to have red radishes dipped in salt before enjoying the pork meat.
Red radish makes a great starter before enjoying crépinette.
Dear Reader, how are you going to serve the Crépinette?
📖 Recipe
Pork Crépinette Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 ½ Cups Ground Pork
- 3 Pieces Garlic Cloves
- 1 Egg
- 1 Teaspoon Thyme Fresh
- 1 Teaspoon Parsley Fresh
- 1 Teaspoon Savory Herb Fresh
- 1 Teaspoon Marjoram Fresh
- 1 Tablespoon All Purpose Flour
- 1 Tablespoon Salt
- 1 Tablespoon Black Pepper Ground
- 1 Tablespoon Bread Crumbs
- ½ Cup Caul fat
- 1 Onion sliced
- Butter to fry
Instructions
- If you have the meat cuts instead of ground meat, grind the meat two times with the meat grinder.
- So that the meat is well ground and a fine consistency.
- Add the chopped garlic, egg, the chopped thyme parsley and savory, the dried Marjoram, the flour, salt, pepper and the breadcrumbs to the meat mince in a bowl. Mix it all well and leave to marinate for minimum 15 minutes.
- Add 1-2 handfuls of the meat mixture into the center and wrap the caul around the meat.
- To create a patty and to seal the ground meat.
- Cut extra parts of the caul off. Repeat the procedure for the rest of the meat mixture.
- Heat up a large pan with butter and some of the Crépinettes parcels into the hot pan. Fry first for 5 mins on 1 side, then turn and fry on the other side. The Crépinette caul will melt away but keep the patty together and that is the aim. Fry on all sides slightly light brown.
- Serve hot and you have the option of serving with a simple cream sauce, roasted vegetables, rice, mash potato and a salad.
Notes
- Get pork neck meat cut if you can
- Instead of Pork meat, use mutton, lamb, veal, beef, wild game, turkey or chicken meat.
- Serve with rice, roasted vegetables, mash potato and red raw radish. If you don't have the fresh herbs together, substitute with dried herbs.
In medieval times, they would have made these, spiced and herbed generously to mask that it may be off! An interesting dish for sure.
Really nice! I've heard of crépinette, but have never tasted it and certainly never made it. It's actually pretty easy. In the US most grocery stores no longer stock caul fat (at least I'm not seeing it) although butchers will order it for you. And Mexican grocery stores sometimes have it. Any way great recipe - thanks for sharing this with us.
Love the story about the restaurant order! Too funny. Helene, this looks incredibly tasty and I'm feeling miffed. Yes, miffed. My French mother-in-law has never made this and I've never even tasted it. This looks a wonderful recipe and time I tried it out at home (perhaps word will get out to the crepinette-deprived family via my kids, lol!)
Wow, this looks amazing Helene! And so impressive. I've never seen caul fat before - it looks like a net!
This was a really fun tutorial as I've never prepared pork this way! Looks so juicy and I love the sauce over these meat (and mushrooms yum!). This is such a fancy meal and I love you took time to teach us!
This look amazing Helene
I adore crepinette, and yours look just fabulous! It's almost like a British faggot too......also made by stuffing meat and onions into a caul case.....a lovely recipe! Karen
Didn't know this was possible homemade! I am so impressed.
Wow Helene,
This is so impressive. I love the step by step pictures shown. The dish looks fantastic!
that looks so yummy! I've never even heard of using caul fat like that!
Lovely, I really like this way to prepare meat. It sounds delicious and packed with flavours. My mum use caul fat to cook veal liver. I've never use it. I simply forgot about it. Good tip!!
This looks so juicy and delicious. I thought for sure by the title this was going to be a savory dessert of some sort. I had no idea that a crepinette was a meat cooked in netting. The French do know their meats! 🙂
Helene, I was trying to post on the coconut post, but there is no reply form on that one. No clue why I can't see it. SO leaving comment here - love the coconut heads. Shared it on my Facebook page too!
Hi Minnie!
Thank you for letting me know! I am trying to solve the weird issue right now. Sorry for the inconvinience my blog caused! =/
ok problem solved! You can comment just as always again. =)
Oops...I posted yesterday....what happened to it....
As I said yesterday, this dish is awe inspiring. I had never even heard of caul fat.
As with the girls above.. this is definitely a new one for me! I didn't know such a dish.. or the caul fat existed.. I bet it tasted fantastic!
This is so impressive, Helene! I've watched this being done, never tried it myself. Thanks for sharing those step by step pictures.
You are so inspiring, this looks very intricate 😀
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
I've seen this done on Australian tv but I've never tried it myself. I'm in awe that you aren't one bit timid about trying anything! My hat's off to you, Helene!