welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen
today we're going to make a version of mexican fresh chorizo and i say a
version of because there is no one standard recipe last winter when
julie and i went to mexico a couple of times during the
winter to learn about making al pastor when we were in those kitchens we asked
everybody how do you make your chorizo and we got we got a lot of different
answers Please tell us in the comments where you are watching from!
so i've sort of cobbled together a recipe that i think is um going to be fairly close to what we
tasted there as best i can do here in toronto and i'm
going to start out with some peppers so what i have here are
some dried chilies i have some guajillo and some ancho chilies and i've
got a pot of hot water here that has just come to a boil i've turned the heat
off so the water is hot and i'm just going to put the chilies in
and allow them to steep in the hot liquid
for i don't know 25 or 30 minutes just so they soften up
really nicely while the chilies are still softening up i'm going to grind
together the rest of the spice mix and that's all spice
berries
coriander
thyme
bay leaves cloves
cracked black pepper
cumin and mexican oregano
and so what i already have here is some ground paprika
i didn't need to regrind that and our freshly ground spices and we'll just
give that a mix and now we'll blend up the chilies so
i've got a blender jug here and i'm going to take
the chilies that have soaked they're really soft now and put them into the
blender jug and if they bring a little bit of water
with them that's fine you don't really need the water
but don't go out of your way to drain them
you know and be squeezing them tight to get rid of all the water
okay in they go next i've got some white vinegar just
regular distilled white vinegar some cloves of garlic and a
thumb size of achiote paste
and we'll blend this up we'll set this aside while we deal with
the pork
so what i have here is some roughly chopped pork shoulder
and fat and i've cut it up into pieces just big enough to fit through the chute
i've had it in the freezer for almost two hours now so that it's fairly firm
it's almost frozen all the way through you want your meat to be super cold
i've got an eight millimeter die in here or eight millimeter cutter head
it's fairly coarse cut but that's what we want for the first
run through
so in here i have the first coarse grind of the pork to that i'm going to add the
dry spice mixture and the wet spice mixture
and then i'm just going to get in with my hands and mix it all together
now spread it out and i'm going to put this back in the freezer for about
another 45 minutes before we grind it again
while that's chilling i'm going to switch out the coarse disc
for a much finer one this one is four and a half millimeters so
pretty easy job
out comes one disc and
in goes the other
now we're going to run the meat mixture through the finer disc and running it
through a coarse disc first and then the finer disc and adding
the spices in the middle helps to promote mixing it really nicely
and also you get a better grind by not trying to grind it on the
smallest disc first so the second time through is a
little bit more difficult but it's really not that hard
[Music] okay i'm gonna put a lid on this i'm
gonna stick it in the fridge and i'm gonna let it
sit overnight just to let all of the flavors come together and tomorrow
we'll portion it out and do some stuffing
now one of the great things about fresh mexican style chorizo is that you don't
have to make it into sausages most recipes that you see
call for it to be released from the casing before you fry
it so just put it into containers if you don't
want to make sausages just put the meat into a container and
you can stick these in the freezer and then you pull them out whenever you need
them i am going to turn a little bit of this
meat into actual sausages because i want to smoke
them outside for supper tonight so we'll fill up the sausage stuffer or
fill it up as much as i need
now if you're looking for a full sausage tutorial i have one coming up
in the pipeline
so we make sausage quite a bit and this is the one part of the process
that i have never quite got the hang of i do my best i see how it goes i am not
someone who makes a lot of links i will usually make a
much longer piece and turn it into a coil
and then vacuum seal those coils sort of uh enough for
dinner for julie and i so like i said i'm not someone who makes a lot of links
but i'll give it a try and then i'll finish up the rest of
these and take them out to the yoder smoker and we will cook
them off for supper now if you're not going to
cook these today i would actually leave them out on
a tray in your fridge for 24 hours
before you vacuum seal them and put them away
that gives time for the skin to dry out and you'll get a much
better sausage when you go to cook it down the line
so there you go
the grill is set up at 225 degrees fahrenheit
and i like to cook my sausage or start my sausage at a much
lower temperature it just means that the sausage aren't going to
burst through their casings as easily so i'm going to put these on
and you want to cook them to an internal temperature of 160 degrees fahrenheit
not that many people probably come out here with a thermometer and
test them
hey jules hey glenn how's the sausage making
uh you know i think we did okay if i made
100 pounds of sausage every day day in day out at a restaurant or a
or a butcher shop it might be better it might be better i think we say that
every year when we make sausage it's it's you do it every once in a
while and you sort of make it work tastes good but it's a little
awkward yeah all right in this case i used the wrong horn to
film the i used the wrong sized horn to fill the sausage but whatever
that's that's pretty accurate in texture for a chorizo like it's a dried
flavorful kind of thing going on there full flavor great texture
that is really good but it really is the kind of sausage that you
that you take out of the casing and you cook in other things
so i'm still going to have a second one though i think that's great
i've got a pile of it now so we'll be making a whole bunch of other recipes
that use it and don't be afraid of making fresh sausage
it's not that hard to get something that's really good
yeah thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you