Chorizo

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Image:Chorizo1.jpg Chorizo is a pork sausage originating from Spain. It is made from coarsely chopped fatty pork and usually seasoned with chili and paprika. The mild Spanish paprika used is what gives this sausage its characteristic flavor. The paprika itself can be found as either picante (hot) or dulce (sweet). Some varieties are hung in cold dry places to cure, as happens with jamón serrano (ham). The Pamplona variety grinds the meat further.

Better known in the United States are the Mexican and Caribbean versions, though these are seldom encountered in Europe. Based on the Spanish chorizo fresco, these versions are made from pork that is ground rather than chopped and different seasonings are used in addition to chili.

The growing popularity of tapas bars in the United Kingdom and the United States has made chorizo popular, and it is now an essential item at delicatessen counters in supermarkets.

Chorizo can be eaten as is (sliced or in a sandwich), simmered in sidra, barbecued or fried. Like breakfast sausage, it is used as an ingredient of other dishes. It also can be used as a partial replacement for ground beef or pork. A popular breakfast dish in Mexico, and Southwest U.S. is chorizo con huevos (Spanish for "chorizo with eggs"). It is made by simply putting pieces of chorizo into scrambled eggs as soon as you start cooking them, and mashing the pieces of chorizo with a fork, so the two ingredients blend together during cooking. Or the chorizo may be briefly fried before the eggs are added, as the fat in the skillet will prevent the eggs from sticking. Chorizo con huevos is often used in making breakfast burritos. In some regions of Spain, such as Extremadura where the pork was for centuries basic for subsistence, a usual dish is huevos con chorizo (Spanish for "eggs with chorizo"). This dish consists, on the one side on fried chorizos (in olive oil or pork fat) accompanied with deep-fried eggs. The frying pan for the eggs must contain at least 3 centimers of oil or melted fat, with a high temperature, i.e. when the oil starts to release smoke. The chorizo used for this dish is less cured and cannot be eaten without being cooked.

In Argentina and other South American countries, chorizo is the name for any coarse meat sausage. Argentine chorizos normally contain pork meat and do not tend to be terribly spicy. Some Argentinian chorizo producers occasionally add other types of meat in order to improve the flavor, such as donkey meat; however, consumers are not always aware of this, and may consider such additions cheating.

When served in a bread roll, the sausages are called choripanes (s. choripán). There is also a Portuguese sausage, also made from pork but with different seasonings, called chouriço.

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