Cheater’s Chorizo

You’ll not be disappointed with this homemade chorizo recipe. It’s very good, easy to mix up, and perfect for when you have that little bit of red wine leftover. I did a chile grind over the pork and it worked great.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the combination of red spices and the fat from the pork made it look just like store-bought chorizo. Next time, I’ll make it into link sausage. The garlic cloves I used measured out to 2 teaspoons finely minced garlic. It makes a very nice breakfast burrito when mixed with eggs and potatoes.

This is an absolutely simple way to have homemade fresh chorizo right at home—and it tastes much better than the readymade stuff I find in the local supermarket.

I’ll be making this more often to freeze for later use. I’d actually like to make meatballs out of them, too. Also for our taste, I’ll add a tad more cayenne pepper next time. After making it, I decided to stuff squid with it, and it came out spectacular.

This is a wonderful recipe. When I think of fresh chorizo, I always think of Mexican chorizo. Looking at the spices in this recipe, it didn’t seem as though it was going to be that style of sausage, but I wanted to try it anyway. I’m so happy that I did. I think that the flavors are more like the Spanish chorizo, which is usually a cured sausage. The flavors were just like the chorizo that we buy that is imported from Spain. This however, was far superior. There were no chunks of fat that were difficult to chew. Everything here blended into a wonderful burst of flavor.

I questioned leaving the fennel seeds whole—when we make sausage, we usually grind the fennel seeds with a mortar and pestle. I wanted to experiment, so I ended up dividing the pork, which we had ground ourselves, into two bowls. I divided everything else between the two bowls, and put whole fennel seeds in one batch, and the crushed fennel seeds in the other. I cooked up a bit of each in a cast iron pan, and was surprised to find that we liked the whole fennel seed sausage better. We had picked up smoked paprika at The Spanish Table over in Berkeley. The owner of the store, who is very knowledgeable and fun to talk to, had mentioned that he buys the sweet smoked paprika and just adds cayenne when he needs the hot smoked paprika. He said that he gets better control over the finished product and so that’s what I did. I used the sweet smoked paprika and just added cayenne to taste.

I’m really looking forward to using this sausage. I have so many things that I want to do with it. Tomorrow, it’s going into a batch of white beans that I made in a provençal style. I want to use it in soup. I want to use it with pasta. I want to have it with eggs. The possibilities are endless. This will be a recipe that we will make again, and again, and again. I am so very glad that it crossed my path.