Tried something new: Basque Chorizo!

[Kevin A]

After having made several successful batches of traditional Polish kielbasa (my wife's family are Polish), I decided to investigate some sausage recipes that would reflect MY own Basque heritage.

I have made a number of 'Basque-style' dishes before, but never looked into the 'tube-meats.' However, that was to change. Last weekend while at Lake Tahoe, a friend who knew I was making sausages at home, asked me if I made any 'Basque' sausages yet. I naively told him I wasn't aware of any particularly 'basque-style' sausage.
So we wander into a local butcher shop to pick up some nice steaks and I see a magazine in a rack ("Edible Reno-Tahoe") with a cover depicting...(what else?)...Basque chorizo! Produced locally at a Basque deli in Carson City, Nevada.

Cover of the magazine I have showing a batch of Basque chorizo:


A trip to that deli ensued & I met one of the sausage makers. I sampled the chorizo. Great stuff—not surprisingly, it is much closer to the fresh Spanish-style versus the Mexican chorizo: peppery, garlicky; some were sweet while others quite hot(!). We spoke for a while and he generously shared with me the ingredients he uses in his popular chorizo recipe. They crank out over 200lbs of this stuff weekly. Some of the ingredients may be hard to get, I was told, but if I was serious about making it 'authentic,' and the REAL DEAL, it was worth the effort.

Once I had my ingredients list, I was off & running.

Pork & beef mixture.
Here's 5 pounds of pork butt and 1 pound of beef chuck, well-chilled (near-frozen) & ready to grind:


Other key ingredients included:

Espelette pepper (Basque: Ezpeletako biperra) — "the beloved chile pepper of the Basque country." A variety of pepper that is cultivated & dried traditionally in the northern territory of the Basque people. Flakey ground dry red pepper; Mildly sweet at first taste with a bit of a kick afterwards.


Choricero red pepper —a red pepper utilized in cooking and making of sausages like chorizo. The 'pimiento choricero' is typically sold dried. To use it, it must be rehydrated over the course of a few hours, and then the flesh is scraped out. It is also sold in glass jars as a paste. Finding dry choriceros was next to impossible, but I did locate jars of the 'paste.'


Here's the rest of the ingredients. I acquired some nice Sweet Spanish paprika (preferred) but a good Hungarian sweet would do just as well, I was told. Fresh Garlic, Red wine, Black pepper (tellicherry variety preferred), Kosher salt, Sugar, Pinch of nutmeg or allspice 'to taste' and Cure#1 (if smoking— which I plan to, although the cure is not pictured below:


Added all the ingredients to the ground meat (4.5mm plate), including the pink Cure#1:


All mixed & ready to go:


I'm letting this sit overnight. I did fry up a small piece to test the overall flavor. It needed a bit more salt & a touch more sugar to offset the bit of paprika 'bitterness', but the flavor I was after ('red-peppery, garlicky, bit of heat') was pretty much there. The smoking will, I believe, only enhance the final product.

Next Day:

5:00am.....Got an early start this morning and began the stuffing process. Using 30-32mm natural pork casings.
Six pounds ready for the smoker:


6:45am: Managed to dangle the load over two dowels, trying to keeping 'touching' to a minimum. I couldn't find any more dowels as they've mysteriously wandered off—so I made do with the two.No smoke for the first hour—just 130° temp to dry them a bit...


Used my A-maze-n smoker with 2.5 lanes of maple dust. I wanted something 'light' so as not to overwhelm the sausage flavor. Kind of silly of me, really, considering all the spices in the chorizo...

10:00 am After two hours of smoke, took a peek...


3:30pm — I finally hit the desired IT after 7.5 hours so its time to pull the chorizo....


Bloom time. I had some weird twist and 'curls' on some due to my chorizo-wrangling on the dowels. The color came out nice—that dark, rich mahogany red.
They''ll cool & bloom here for about an hour...


Sample time!
Although they turned out not as spicy as the samples I had in Carson City, this is still a very tasty chorizo. Nothing like the Mexican variety.
Plenty of garlic with a strong 'red peppery' bite. NOT hot—which I was concerned about using the espelette pepper for the first time. More importantly, my wife  and boys really liked it.


It would go great with eggs, or in a good paella. Heck I might even get some good crusty bread & make a tasty sandwich with some!

—Kevin

[Stickbowcrafter]

Nice looking sausage and great pics! I like the names of the ingredients embedded in the photo. Nice job!

-Brian

[MTFiddler]

Wow, I agree that it would be perfect in a nice paella.  Did you guess at the ingredient amounts or did he give specific amounts.  I would be willing to try that one when the snow set in this winter.

Lon

[SiFumar]

Awesome looking!

[3rensho]

Wow, great job and pics.  We grow Espelette peppers in our garden every year.  Dry and grind some, preserve some in EVOO and eat the rest fresh.

[ExpatCanadian]

Looks awesome!  I've been meaning to try something similar, but in a dry-cured version.

[OU812]

Now thats allotta garlic,,,,,,,,,,,,,,sure looks gooood.

[ghost9mm]

As always Kevin, one heck of a job and really a great presentation...well done my friend...

[jiggerjams]

Nice post. Always enjoy reading them.

[Tater]

Very, very nice.  I will admit that I drooled on myself a little.

[Fisher]

Nice job very nice. Great pics, and I like how you labeled the plates with the name of the spices. Awesome....

[NePaSmoKer]

Ditto with everyone else.......Good job

[pikeman_95]

Kevin
As usual a fantastic job in sausage making and presentation. Nice stuffing job the casings are even and nice and tight. I see you finished these in the smoker. Were you looking for a drier texture? They sure look good.

Kirby

[Kevin A]

Kevin
As usual a fantastic job in sausage making and presentation. Nice stuffing job the casings are even and nice and tight. I see you finished these in the smoker. Were you looking for a drier texture? They sure look good.

Kirby

Kirby
Rather than the traditional 'poach' method I tend to favor in most cases, I was going for a drier texture—similar to the samples I had at the Basque deli. The chorizo is still pleasantly moist despite the 'drier' exterior.

—Kevin

[smokeNcanuck]

Looks really good!!  Luv the big pieces of garlic, awesome!!