homemade mexican chorizo recipe – use real butter (2024)

Recipe: homemade mexican chorizo

It’s been an ordinary week around here. And ordinary is pretty spectacular! We’ve seen foxes running through our yard, lightning storms all around the house, and Jeremy and I ran into (almost literally, but just shy by 10 yards) a mother moose and her calf on a trail run! Just because awesome happens regularly, doesn’t mean it is any less awesome in my book. Same goes for awesome food, awesome friends…

Back in the day, few of my friends were much into food. Sure, they’d eat it, but I didn’t have many who were avid cooks or “foodies”. The flow of recipes via snail mail or email or even scribbled on a scrap of paper was practically non-existant. Then I found rec.food.cooking in the early days of the interwebs and now the leap to today… with all of these food blogs with PICTURES and great recipes and friendly people and even people you end up meeting or never meeting, but becoming close friends regardless. I love that stuff. LOVE.IT. I think it is responsible for more than 50% of the recipes I now try.

My friend, Mel, recently raved on Facebook about a recipe for homemade chorizo that she had gotten from Rebecca. Don’t you love how these recipes get passed on like chain letters without the annoying letters and implied guilt? Awesome. I had never heard of chorizo until a friend of mine had made it one of his secret ingredients in a chili cookoff many years ago. The chili was great, but with so many ingredients, I couldn’t pinpoint which one was the chorizo. This was an ingredient I read about, saw in photos, would occasionally enjoy as part of an ensemble at a creative restaurant, but never had at home…

That is, until I saw how flipping easy this recipe was. I had to try it. Remember how I have a hoarding problem with certain foods – like New Mexican chiles? Got plenty of those… Now I have a few less chiles, but a lot more Mexican chorizo! Booyah!!

The most time-consuming part for me was stemming and de-seeding the chiles, because those little seeds go flying off into the kitchen and I have to hunt them down to make sure Kaweah (aka, the vacuum) doesn’t wander past and suck one up. Other than that, the prep time is quick. Let the toasted chiles, onions, and garlic sit for an hour in hot vinegar while you go do something productive. I love getting things done that don’t require me to do anything. When the time is up, the chile mixture goes into a blender. I divorced my old blender and remarried a Vitamix. This is true love, folks.

Let that spicy blend of goodness cool completely before mixing it in with the pork and all of the spices. I was tempted to mix it all up in my stand mixer, but when Mel said to mix by hand, I was all, “Yeah, let’s do this!”. So I doode it.

I wound up with five pounds of raw chorizo and bagged it up into 1-pound portions to freeze. Actually, I only froze four pounds and I cooked the other one up because I wanted to taste it. It’s a nice, spicy (but not crazy spicy), tangy sausage. The cinnamon comes out a little later and gives it a warm flavor. This is good stuff.

Not having had much chorizo in the past, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I didn’t want to make chili… not in summer. Mel had made eggs with her chorizo which set off an idea in my head. As I’ve stated before, I am not much of a breakfast person. In all likelihood, this is because a lot of breakfasts in western cultures are sweet. But a breakfast burrito really appealed to me (and Jeremy) the other day.

My feelings toward flour tortillas tend to be lukewarm. I really prefer corn tortillas and it behooves me to ask someone to please develop a pliable soft corn tortilla. Anyway, I put hashed brown potatoes, scrambled eggs and chorizo, and some sharp cheddar cheese in the burrito. It’s probably more traditional to see cubed hashed brown potatoes, but I like the crunchy bits and well – it’s my burrito. Next time, I’m omitting the cheese in mine (although Jeremy liked the cheese). But that chorizo is golden. And now I have four pounds in my freezer… and if I ever run out, I’ma gonna make MOAR!

Homemade Mexican Chorizo
[print recipe]
from Alosha’s Kitchen and Foodie with Family

10 dried guajillo chile peppers, stem and seeds removed
7 dried arbol chile peppers, stem and seeds removed
4 dried New Mexico chile peppers, stem and seeds removed
2 white onions, peeled and chopped
5 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
2 tbsps ground cumin
2 tbsps Mexican oregano
2 tbsps kosher salt
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
3 lbs. ground pork

Wipe the dried chiles down with a damp cloth. Place the chiles (seeds and stems removed) in a hot skillet or frying pan for a minute on a side until they are no longer brittle. Remove from heat. Place the chiles in a large non-reactive bowl. Place the chopped onions and garlic on top of the chiles. Heat the vinegar in a saucepan or in the microwave until quite warm, and pour that over the chiles, onions, and garlic. Weigh the whole thing down with a plate, then tightly seal the entire bowl with a sheet of plastic wrap. Let it sit at room temperature for an hour. Empty the contents into a blender or food processor and blend until it is smooth. You can add more vinegar if you need more liquid in case things don’t feel like cooperating in the blender. Let the sauce cool completely. After the sauce has cooled, add it and the remaining spices to the ground pork. Mix with your hands until uniformly distributed. Divvy up the sausage to freeze or use right away. Makes 5 pounds of chorizo.

July 25th, 2012: 11:39 pm
filed under gluten-free, meat, recipes, savory, spicy, vegetables