Tryin' Chorizo

Well, today was the day. I bought all the ingredients and gave it a shot.

First, thank you to Habanero Smoker for

the

recipe. Here it is for easy reference, and will be explained in detail later:

Basque Chorizo

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 lbs. pork shoulder
• 1/2 lbs. beef plate or fatty chuck (you could also use skirt of flank steak)
• 1/2 Cup sweet Spanish or Hungarian paprika
• *1/4 Cup dried New Mexico (Anhiem) chile puree
• 1/4 Cup minced garlic
• 3 Tbsp dry red wine
• 4 tsp kosher salt
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 tsp coarsely ground black pepperPinch of ground cloves

++1 tsp pink salt dissolved in ¼ cup water (optional)
prepared medium hog casings (if you are going to stuff).
Directions:Grind pork and beef through a 3/8” plate.

In large bowl combine ground meat with paprika, chile puree, garlic wine, salt, sugar, black pepper, and cloves. (I generally will mix the meat with the spices prior to grinding).

++Add curing salt if you are planning to smoke.Mix well, kneading the meat and spices until everything is thoroughly mixed. (I like to refrigerate the mixture overnight to allow the spices and pink salt distribute more evenly).
If stuffing your can form into rings, or 10 inch lengths, or 6 inch lengths.
*Chile Puree:In a

small bowl, soak two dried New Mexico chiles in enough

boiling water to cover them; for 10 minutes. Drain and reserve water. Remove stems and seeds and puree the chiles in a food processor, adding a teaspoon of the reserved soaking water.

My deepest apologies to all the Basque who read this and scoff at my attempt and compromises and shortcuts. I'm learning, and I don't have access to all the top-notch homeland ingredients.

So hopefully it tastes good! Funny thing...I've never even had chorizo to begin with, so I'm not sure I'll know if it's good or not... But anyway, it was fun to try something new.

To start:

Basically it goes like this - Find all ingredients, mix, cook, eat. Pretty simple.

My shopping trip yielded the following:

3lbs ground pork (I don't have a meat grinder that I know of...and it's easier)

1lb ground beef (same as the pork)

1 jar of regular Paprika (I don't know if it's different than sweet Spanish...)

1 bag of Anaheim chiles (thank god the name was on the bag)

1 jar minced garlic

1 bottle Lambrusco red wine (probably could have used cooking wine or maybe found at least a Spanish wine...Italian is close, right?)

1 box Kosher

salt (had to ask a lady about this...never heard of it before)

It may not be the most authentic version of chorizo, but at least the ingredients look professional once put in little bowls!

Step 1. Measure out ingredients

Start the water to get it boiling for the chile puree. While waiting, measure out the rest of the ingredients. I had to grind out the 2 tsp of pepper, so if you have pre-ground pepper, you will save yourself some time and a sore arm.

The 1/4 cup Paprika was the entire jar.

Alright, now that the water is boiling, put a couple of chiles in a bowl and pour the bowling water on them, enough to cover them. The goal is to reconstitute them to allow for puree. Since they tend to float, I put a couple of spoons on them to weigh them down.

After 10 minutes, they should be plenty pliable. Take

them out of the water, but don't throw the water out! Slice off the stems and slice them in halves or quarters lengthwise to get all the seeds out. Don't miss any, or one of your eaters will get a nasty spicy surprise!

Place the cleaned peppers in your food processor and puree away!

Once you have all of

your ingredients, move on to step 2.

Step 2: Mix it up!

Literally...take everything, put it in a bowl, and start kneading the meat until the spices are all even. That's it.

If you're really hardcore into it, and have access to sausage casings, I'd love to hear how it went from here. I put the mix in the fridge and will let it sit overnight. I'll cook some up with some noodles or make into patties for hamburgers. It's basically pre-flavored meat now... so the sky seems the limit! More to follow when I actually TASTE this creation of mine.

Update:
I mixed up the chorizo with some noodles. It is good! The paprika is definitely the most dominate flavor, so you may want to back off the amount a little bit to ease it up, or maybe just find the Spanish sweet paprika, which could make all the difference.

Happy cooking!