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.
Global Food Recipes
with Spices and Herbs
Free E-Book available for a limited time. Grab yours now and get instantly inspired!
You missed out!
📕 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.
