Meats and Sausages
Chouriço de Abóbora de Barroso-Montalegre
A very original Portuguese pork-pumpkin dry sausage from Barroso-Montalegre, a small area on the northern border with Spain, west of Bragança and northwest of Braga.
Chouriço de Abóbora de Barroso-Montalegre carries PGI, 2007 classification.
| Meats | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| Pork, semi-fat | 700 g | 1.54 lb |
| Pumpkin (or squash)* | 200 g | 0.44 lb |
| Wine, red or white | 100 ml | 3.33 oz fl |
Ingredients per 1000g (1 kg) of meat
| Salt | 18 g | 3 tsp |
| Cure #2 | 2.5 g | 1/2 tsp |
| Sugar | 3.0 g | 1/2 tsp |
| Paprika, sweet | 2.0 g | 1 tsp |
| Chili powder | 2.0 g | 1 tsp |
| Garlic, minced | 7.0 g | 2 cloves |
| Bay leaf, crushed | 1 leaf | |
| Cinnamon | 1.0 g | 1/2 tsp |
| Ginger | 1.0 g | 1/2 tsp |
Instructions
- Cut the meat and fat into small pieces and marinate with salt, cure #1, bay leaf, garlic and wine for up to 5 days. Stir daily.
- Scrape the flesh of the squash (or pumpkin), discard the seeds. Wrap around with a cloth (or cheese cloth), place in a colander, add some weight on top and let it drain for 2 days.
- Mix meat, squash, paprika, chili, cinnamon and ginger together.
- Stuff into 60 mm hog casing. The casing is tied shut with two simple knots at each end, using a single piece of cotton twine, giving the sausage a horseshoe shape.
- Apply a thin cold smoke at 18° C (64° F) for 30 days. Smoking need not to be continuous, for example the fire can be put out at night and restarted in the morning as long as the temperature inside of the smokehouse stays below 18° C. Think of the process as drying with smoke. The sausage is smoked with oak.
- Dry at 12-15° C (54-59° F), 75% humidity for 7 days.
- Store at 12° C (54° F), 70% humidity.
Notes
* Both squash and pumpkin belong to the same family (the cucurbitaceae). A pumpkin is a type of squash.
