Meats and Sausages
Chorizo de Aragón
Chorizo de Aragón is a Spanish semi-dry sausage popular in the region of Aragón, especially around its capital Zaragoza. The sausage is made with lean pork, fatty pork cuts like pork belly, dewlap and classical Spanish chorizo spice combination: pimentón paprika, oregano and garlic.
| Meats | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| Pork, lean | 700 g | 1.54 lb |
| Pork belly, dewlap or back fat | 300 g | 0.66 lb |
Ingredients per 1000g (1 kg) of meat
| Salt | 30 g | 5 tsp |
| Cure #1 | 2.5 g | 1/2 tsp |
| Pepper | 2.0 g | 1 tsp |
| Pimentón, sweet | 24 g | 4 Tbsp |
| Pimentón, hot | 2.0 g | 1 tsp |
| Oregano, ground | 2.0 g | 1 tsp |
| Nutmeg | 0.5 g | ¼ tsp |
| Garlic, smashed | 7.0 g | 2 cloves |
Instructions
- Grind lean meat through 8 mm (3/8”) plate.
- Grind fat cuts through 8 mm (3/8”) plate. You can manually cut partially frozen fat into 8 mm pieces for better particle definition.
- Mix ground meat with all spices, then add ground fat and mix again. Pack the mixture in container and place for 24-36 hours in refrigerator.
- Stuff into 28-32 mm pork or sheep casings forming 10 cm (4”) long links.
- Dry/ferment at 22-24° C (72-75° F), 85-90% humidity for 24 hours.
- Dry for 48 hours at 15-18° C (59-64° F), 70-80% humidity.
- Dry at 12-15° C (53-59° F) for 48 hours. At this point Chorizo de Aragón can be classified a semi-dry sausage which is served fried or cooked.
Notes
To make a dry sausage continue drying at 12-14° C (53-57° F), 75-80% humidity until the sausage looses 33% of its original weight. The dry sausage can be consumed raw.
Nowadays, commercial producers stuff sausage into horseshoe loops about 40 cm (16”) long.
