As one of the best foods in the world, chorizo comes in many forms and styles. The delicious meat is popular among many cultures and locations, but today, we’ll look at the Mexican-style chorizo. With its own flavor and cooking requirements, here’s a deeper guide to Mexican-style chorizo.
What Is Chorizo?
A chorizo is a specialty sausage that’s typically made from pork. The chorizo uses chopped and seasoned meat inside the sausage to make a great sausage for many dishes. Cooks will often ferment and cure the ground pork and heavy seasoning, creating a spicy or mild flavor that many people love. The seasonings vary widely between cooks and recipes, so you can never be exactly sure what flavor you’re getting.
What’s Mexican-Style Chorizo?
Although chorizo’s come in many forms, Mexican-style chorizo is a popular format for this food. There are many different variations of a Mexican-style chorizo, but you can generally count on a few things being consistent across all Mexican chorizos. Here’s a look at a few of the characteristics all Mexican chorizos follow.
Meat Type
The traditional Mexican chorizo can use two types of meat—namely pork or beef, with pork as the most popular choice. Generally, cooks will cut up and ground this meat into chunky bits, creating a thicker ground meat that fills the sausage.
Seasoning Style
While Spanish chorizo (another popular style) commonly uses paprika and wine to season their meat, the Mexican chorizo uses chilis and vinegar as its base. From there, each person can add their own mixture of seasonings to complement that flavor—though cumin and cilantro are other standard seasonings.
Fermented but Never Cured
When you look to buy a Spanish chorizo, you can expect cured meat in your food. However, Mexican chorizos are almost never cured, and cooks will instead ferment their Mexican chorizos. It really depends on the cook’s preference if they do ferment the chorizo first, so don’t expect it one way or the other.
Needs Cooking
Because most cooks don’t cure their chorizo before selling it, you should expect raw chorizo when ordering it in a grocery store, or when you order chorizo online. Unless you’re ordering from a restaurant, your Mexican chorizo will need proper cooking at home before you can enjoy it fully.
How To Prepare Mexican Style Chorizo
There’s no one right way to prepare Mexican chorizo, as people have their own delicious recipes. But there are some common ways people prepare and enjoy chorizo you can see across the world. This section will take a deeper look at some of the ways people like making and enjoying chorizos you can try for yourself at home. So, hopefully each one of these ideas is something you can go to your local store and try yourself.
As an Ingredient
There are two main ways that people like to use chorizo when cooking—either as an ingredient or as the main part of their meal. This part will look at how people like to use chorizo as an ingredient and what to mix it with to create amazing meals.
Inside Chili
One of the most popular dishes that people make around the world is also a great way to use chorizo. Chili is a great dish to add chorizo as it brings a lot of flavors and complements the spices that are normally in chili. Additionally, you can spice and season the dish as you want, creating the perfect blend of flavors for you and whatever meal you’re trying to make. You can even make a chili dip with chorizo to make it easy to share and liven up any party.
Egg Dishes
As another popular combination with Mexican chorizo, eggs make a perfect mix with the meat as they add texture and flavor while being easy to season and blend with the meat. Instead of distracting away from the amazing seasonings in the chorizo, the eggs take on their flavor and taste that much better for it.
On Top of Potatoes
Although potatoes come in many forms, they all make great bases for a good chorizo dish. Whether you load up a potato or dice it up, the potato will draw out the flavor of the meat. This is very popular in tacos or burritos, creating a whole new way to eat this food.
Quick Flavoring
Although this won’t draw out the full flavor or potential of the dish, some people like to just sprinkle chorizo onto other meals and dishes to add in a lot of flavors. The spiced meat is a great addition to blander pastas and soups if they need that bit of kick. However, this usually means you aren’t pulling out all the flavors of the chorizo as you don’t cook the food all together.
Main Dish
If you’re looking to create a dish that prominently features chorizo as the main ingredient, then you want to learn more about how to cook it. You can’t just throw chorizo onto a pan and hope for the best; there’s a proper way to draw out the best flavor and seasoning from the meat. Here are a few of the tricks to get that flavor the chorizo is famous for.
Cook on Low Heat
The best way to draw out the potential of chorizo is by putting it on the fire but at a very low heat. Although it can be tempting to cook your chorizo at a higher temp, the meat will burn and lose a lot of its signature flavor. A low heat will cook the food without burning it and the seasoning will release the best flavor at this temperature.
Go Slow for The Best Flavor
The second trick for drawing out the best flavor in your chorizo dish is to cook slowly. A low heat for a few hours can create the best chorizo you’ll ever have. The slow cook will activate all the seasonings and help them spread throughout the meat. Otherwise, you’re just rushing the food and you’ll feel like the spices aren’t enough. Chorizo is a food that’s best enjoyed when you give it the proper time to full cook, so keep that in mind when you start planning your meals.
This guide should be everything you need to know about Mexican-styled chorizo. From the definition to some of the best ways to cook it into your meals, you should now be ready to get the chorizo you want and use it in your meals.
