Chorizo

A fresh sausage, not a cured one — and the meat and fat are kept cold enough that the fat never smears.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains a sausage whose meat the source does not name, pork.

Ingredients

• 800 g pork shoulder, in 2 cm cubes
• 200 g pork back fat, in 1 cm cubes
• 6 ancho chillies, stalks and seeds removed
• 3 guajillo chillies, stalks and seeds removed
• 6 cloves garlic
• 100 ml cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 20 g salt
• sausage casings, or none at all

Method

1. THE MEAT AND FAT ARE KEPT COLD ENOUGH THAT THE FAT NEVER SMEARS, and that is the whole difference between good chorizo and a greasy disappointment. Pork fat at room temperature is soft and the blades of a mincer push it around rather than cutting it: it smears into a paste and coats every strand of meat in a film of grease. In the pan that film melts out immediately and the sausage ends up swimming in fat and dry inside. Cubed meat and fat put in the freezer for forty-five minutes until the edges are firm, a mincer plate chilled with them, and the fat is cut cleanly into distinct pieces that stay distinct until they are cooked.
2. IT IS A FRESH SAUSAGE AND IS NOT CURED OR DRIED. No curing salts, no hanging, no fermentation. It is made, rested a day for the flavours to go through, and then cooked like mince. That is why the chilli paste in it is generous and raw-tasting -- there is no three-week maturing to mellow it, so it has to taste right now.
3. THE VINEGAR IS A REAL QUANTITY AND IS STRUCTURAL. A hundred millilitres to a kilo. It carries the chilli into the meat, it is most of why the sausage tastes sharp rather than merely spicy, and in an uncured sausage it is doing some preserving work as well. Half that and it tastes flat and keeps three days instead of a week.
4. IT RESTS A DAY BEFORE IT IS COOKED. Mixed and then refrigerated twenty-four hours. Cooked straight away the chilli sits on the outside of the mince and the middle is plain pork; a day later it is uniformly stained red right through and tastes of one thing instead of two.
5. CASINGS ARE OPTIONAL AND MOST OF IT IS USED LOOSE. Nearly every dish on this site that calls for chorizo wants it skinned and crumbled. Rolled in clingfilm into a log and chilled, it slices and crumbles perfectly well and skips an hour of work.
6. The cubed pork shoulder and back fat spread on a tray and put in the FREEZER 45 MINUTES, until the edges are firm but not solid. The mincer parts chilled with them.
7. The chillies toasted on a dry pan 30 SECONDS a side, soaked in hot water 20 minutes and DRAINED, the water discarded.
8. Blended with the garlic, vinegar, oregano, cumin, cloves, cinnamon and salt to a thick paste. Chilled.
9. The semi-frozen meat and fat minced on a COARSE plate, straight from the freezer, into a chilled bowl.
10. CHECKED: the fat should be in visible distinct white specks. If it has smeared into a paste, the next batch goes back in the freezer.
11. The cold chilli paste worked through the mince by hand -- briefly, no more than a minute, so nothing warms up.
12. Covered and RESTED 24 HOURS in the fridge.
13. A teaspoonful fried and TASTED, and the salt and vinegar corrected in the rest.
14. Either piped into casings and twisted into links, or rolled tightly in clingfilm into a log and chilled.
15. Keeps 1 week in the fridge and freezes 3 months. Used skinned and crumbled in most things.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes