Butifarra

The Colombian butifarra descends from the fresh-meat sausages of the Catalan butifarra family, introduced to the Caribbean coast by the Spanish settlers in the sixteenth century. In three centuries, the preparation moved radically away from its model: smaller, more finely minced, sharpened by the lime absent from the Spanish tradition, without garlic or complex spices. The link with the Catalan butifarra is today chiefly etymological.

Lime juice is the most distinctive technical element. Worked into the forcemeat, the Colombian limón juice, more acidic than the common lime, lowers the pH, tenderises the fibres and brings an immediately perceptible sharpness, characteristic of the Caribbean coast. The poaching, followed by complete cooling, produces a firm, compact sausage that keeps for several days and is served at room temperature, suited to the hot climate of the coast.

The village of Soledad, in the Atlántico, has been regarded since the nineteenth century as the cradle of the Colombian butifarra. The emblematic figure of the product is the butifarra or butifarrero, the street seller who carries the wares in a bucket on their head and roams the streets of Barranquilla and Cartagena, calling out the product and selling the sausages individually with a lime and a sachet of suero costeño (a fermented cream). This practice of itinerant selling, attested since the beginning of the twentieth century, is as constitutive of the butifarra’s identity as the preparation itself.

The variants are little formalised. The Cartagena versions are reputed to be slightly spicier than those of Barranquilla. Butifarra is eaten standing up, on the move after purchase.