Destination
Kampala
The story
Mutura is East Africa's classical blood sausage and one of Kampala and Nairobi's most-loved late-night street foods. Fresh beef or goat blood is mixed with chopped cooked offal (usually a mix of tripe, heart, liver and small pieces of fat), grated onion, garlic, ginger, curry powder, salt and Aleppo pepper, then stuffed into a natural intestine casing, boiled briefly to set the blood into a firm sausage, and finished on a hot charcoal grill until the outside is dark charred and the inside is fully cooked. Sliced into 3cm pieces and served with a small dish of kachumbari and a squeeze of lime. Sold at every Kampala bar-side food stall after 8pm and at Kenyan-Ugandan roadside grill counters. Considered restorative and hangover-adjacent food.
Method
Soak the natural intestine casings in cold water 30 minutes. Rinse inside and out by running water through them. Drain.
Simmer the mixed offal in salted water 30 minutes until tender. Drain and chop fine.
In a large bowl, combine fresh blood, chopped offal, chopped fatty beef, grated onion, garlic, ginger, curry powder, Aleppo pepper, cumin, salt, black pepper and coriander. Mix thoroughly by hand for 2 minutes.
Slide a casing onto a sausage stuffer nozzle (or use a wide funnel). Fill each casing with the blood mixture, filling but not overstuffing (the blood expands slightly during cooking). Twist off into 20cm sausages and tie the ends with kitchen twine.
Prick each sausage 4 to 5 times with a needle to release air pockets. Skipping this step causes them to burst during boiling.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a gentle simmer. Lower the sausages in. Simmer 20 to 25 minutes until the blood inside has fully set and the sausage is firm to the touch. Do not boil hard, or they burst.
Lift the sausages onto a rack to cool for 10 minutes. Heat a charcoal grill to medium-hot. Grill the mutura 4 to 5 minutes per side, turning, until the outside is dark charred and crisp.
Slice each mutura into 3cm coins. Arrange on a platter with kachumbari, avocado and lime. Serve with chili sauce and cold beer. Eat with fingers or a toothpick.
Tips
- Fresh blood only. Non-negotiable. Ask a halal butcher for fresh beef or goat blood, collected that morning. Frozen blood does not have the same texture.
- Cooked offal, not raw. Boiling the offal first is essential; raw offal in the sausage does not cook through properly during the boil-and-grill stage.
- Prick the casings. Un-pricked sausages burst during boiling.
- Gentle simmer, not hard boil. The blood needs to set gently. Rapid boiling ruptures the casings.
- Buy pre-made if you can. Ugandan and Kenyan butchers in the diaspora often sell ready-made mutura that you just have to grill.
More recipes
View all
Cubes of marinated goat meat threaded onto skewers and grilled over charcoal, served with kachumbari salsa and boiled cassava. Kampala's classic evening bar food.
Marinated chicken pieces threaded onto skewers and grilled hard over charcoal, served with cassava, sliced avocado and a fresh lime wedge. Kampala's roadside standard.
Cubes of goat meat pan-fried hard with onion, tomato, garlic and curry powder until the sauce is thick and glossy. Kampala's everyday goat dish.
Chicken or beef in an aromatic peanut sauce, wrapped in a folded banana leaf and slow-steamed for hours. Buganda's royal court dish, served at every wedding.
Small triangular pastries stuffed with spiced minced beef, onion and green peas, deep-fried until crisp. Kampala's Muslim-quarter breakfast staple.
Whole marinated chickens slow-rotated on a vertical rotisserie behind the shop window, chopped and served with chapati, kachumbari and hot chili sauce. Kampala's post-work classic.