Chorizo

Chorizo - The famous paprika rich pork sausage popular in Spain and Latin America comes in two varieties, cured and fresh. Cured sausage is uncooked and uses high quantities of salt or other curing agents such as sodium nitrate. We made fresh Chorizo, sometimes known as cooking Chorizo.

There are many regional variations, we opted for a Spanish recipe using paprika, fennel, garlic, cayenne and red wine vinegar. We used Bart's sweet smoked paprika made right here in Bristol.

A kilo of pork shoulder (pork butt) seasoned with the spice mix above and salt and black pepper. Place this in the freezer for 30 minutes then mince through the fine mincing plate.

Roll a little of the mince into a small pattie, fry and adjust seasoning as required. Repeat this until the meat is seasoned correctly. We increased the paprika up to 40g for our kilo of pork, 3 garlic cloves and around 2 teaspoons of cayenne and cumin. 

At the tasting stage the sausage was too dry but we had no more fat to add, so we used a beaten egg. This is an easy way to add moisture to a sausage, you can also add suet.

Chill the mixture and fill the sausage casings. (I thought there were plenty of photos on this blog already of sausage casing being filled  here - for example)

The finished Chorizo.

A quick Chorizo based dinner - Chorizo, sautéed potatoes and a fried egg

Verdict

I'm quite happy with our first Chorizo but the sausages are still too dry. We still need to add more fat! Also, next time I would like to use a mixture of sweet and picante paprika.

Chorizo scotch eggs - you can use this mixture to make Chorizo  scotch eggs - blog post on this coming up!