Chorizo!

January 17th, 2016

Mind the tomb of the unknown spice.

I have maintained on several occasions that I cannot, in fact, cook. I suppose this is technically not true, in that while I'm generally pretty clueless in the kitchen, there are a couple things that I have worked out how to make in my time. And the first of these, which is still my personal favorite, is my unique chorizo - the recipe for which I have perfected over the last few years.

I simply love chorizo, and have ever since I first had it a few years ago in a local restaurant. It's amazing that I'd gone so long in life without ever experiencing the stuff. Having tried it on 'food truck' style tacos at an El Rancho Grande location real close to our apartment, I have been absolutely hooked on the stuff ever since.

In a strictly technical sense, what I make isn't a Spanish or Portuguese chorizo, in that I don't actually wrap up the meat in pig colons. No, mine is more in line with the Mexican style of the stuff, in that I use ground pork and ancho chili primarily, along with a few other seasonings. No, I don't grind my own meat, at least not yet, but you certainly can if you are so inclined.

You got to get your hands in there and really mix it up.

When I start a batch of chorizo, I collect all of my stuff in one place first, because I am disorganized enough as it is - and hate grasping for ingredients once I've started. So having assembled all the ingredients of my chorizo, I simply combine them all in a bowl and vigorously mix it up. I suppose you don't have to wear gloves when doing this, but if you don't like touching raw flesh, they help.

Once you've spent several minutes doing this, put a bit of plastic wrap over the bowl you mixed your chorizo up in, and throw it in the refrigerator. I like to let my meat stew in its spices at least eight hours before I proceed any further with it, so that the flavor is more pronounced. You can cook it sooner, of course, and it'll taste just fine. But I live by the mantra that more is, in fact, more.

At any rate, once you're ready, put your burner on medium to medium-high, and drop your raw chorizo in. At this point, all you've got to do is heat it up until it's nice and crispy, preferably with a bit of extra charred bits of meat scattered throughout for good measure. And then, all you've got to do is put it in a convenient Tupperware ™ container (if storing for later eating) or just dig in.

The end result of your mixing up a delicious batch of chorizo.

So what you've got here, when you're all done, is a delicious batch of chorizo. My personal favorite is to have chorizo on a corn tortilla, adding in a bit of shredded cheese (your choice what kind), sour cream (or, as we do here, 2% Fage yogurt), and some diced onions and tomatoes. For best results, replace the latter two with my perfected (?) Pico de Gallo salsa (to be explained soon).

The best part about chorizo is that it's so flexible. While originally used with ground pork, you can use your spice mix to construct chorizo with a variety of other meats. The one pictured here, for example, is made with turkey instead of pig. This choice was made because one gets more protein for less calories with turkey, even if you need to add a bit of coconut oil to cook it proper (two teaspoons per pound).

I was admittedly discouraged when, upon bringing several pounds of my chorizo to work during a Mexican themed cookout we were having at lunch one day, when hardly anyone touched it. But then, upon thinking about it, I recalled that most of the people that work where I do are notoriously closed-minded, ignorant conservatives, so Brenda and I exulted in having several extra, unplanned pounds of chorizo to eat.

Two containers of delicious.

I encourage you to try out my recipe, and perhaps tinker with it to your own taste. Sure, the two of us have a hard time keeping the stuff in the house, but you might like it somewhat different than we do. I know some people like a sweeter meat, or some kind of sugar added, so that might be a thing you prefer to do. I don't, since I like to let my chorizo speak for itself, but to each their own.

Speaking of my specific chorizo recipe, here it is per pound of meat:

I emphasized the difference between teaspoons and tablespoons, above, because I always want to mix those up. In case you were wondering.

firebomb@obnoxiousjerk.com