Making Chorizo

Chorizo is a spanish sausage described in more detail Here.  It is normally made with pork, but since we have some grass fed beef, we decided to make it with beef. Tricia is from South Texas and is of Spanish descent and introduced me to chorizo. I really like the taste and fragrance of the wonderful spices used to make it.

We tried to make it once and it turned out so good and was so easy that we've been making it all the time.  Some recipes for chorizo are a little simpler, but this one turned out good for us so we used it.

The ingredients needed are as follows:

• 1 Tablespoon Cumin Seed
• 5 whole cloves
• 1 bay leaf, crumbled
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 Tablespoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon red chile powder
• 1 lb. ground meat
• 3 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 3 cloves garlic, minced

Ingredients for making chorizo

Grind the cumin, cloves, and bay leaf in a mortar/pestle or molcajete.

Grinding spices

Here are the spices all ground up.

                                       

Add coriander, cinnamon, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper to the molcajete and mix together.

Adding spices

Add the apple cider vinegar to the meat.

Adding apple cider vinegar

Then mince the garlic and add to the ground meat:

Minced garlic

Chorizo uses Ancho peppers, but we didn't have them.  An alternative for ancho peppers according to the recipe is 2 Tablespoons paprika and 1 teaspoon red chile powder.  Add to the meat in the bowl.

Add all the spices in the mortar to the meat.  The spices smell so good!

Incorporate the spices into the meat with your hands.  Work it all in so that the spices are distributed evenly.

Refrigerate overnight.

We cook the chorizo in a skillet and then it can be added to eggs or other dishes. Tricia's favorite thing to do is to add chorizo and cheese in a corn tortilla - Benjamin's too.  I like to cut up some potato and cook it in a skillet and then add chorizo and eggs and scramble it all together.  This can be spooned into a tortilla for a great breakfast taco.

Chorizo con huevos y papas

Once the chorizo is cooked we freeze it in freezer bags and then pull it out and use as needed.  We like to always have some frozen that we can add to the skillet as we need it!