Meats and Sausages
Chouriça de Carne de Melgaço
Chouriça is a portuguese dry sausage similar to the more popular Spanish chorizo. Chouriça is very garlicky, red-brown with paprika, and sold in links about 10 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter.
Chouriça de Carne de Melgaço carries PGI, 2015 classification.
| Meats | Metric | US |
|---|---|---|
| Pork shoulder | 700 g | 1.54 lb |
| Pork back fat, hard trimmings or belly | 300 g | 0.66 lb |
Ingredients per 1000g (1 kg) of meat
| Salt | 30 g | 5 tsp |
| Cure #2 | 5.0 g | 1 tsp |
| Pimentón (smoked Spanish paprika), sweet | 10 g | 3 tsp |
| Onion powder | 3.0 g | 1/2 tsp |
| Garlic powder | 5.0 | 1 tsp |
| Bay leaf, crushed | 1 leaf | |
| White wine | 30 ml | 1 fl oz |
Instructions
- Grind meat through 5/16” (8 mm) plate.
- Grind fat through 5/16” (8 mm) plate.
- Mix meat, fat and all ingredients together. Place the mixture for a week in a refrigerator or a cool place where temperature will not exceed 11 ° C (52º F). Cover the container and stir the mixture twice a day.
- Stuff firmly into small diameter (< 30 mm) hog casings forming horse-shoe shaped loops about 1 foot (30 cm) long.
- Apply a thin cold smoke at 18º C (64º F) for 15 days using hard wood chips.
- Dry at 16 → 12º C (60-54º F), 85 → 80% humidity for 21 days. The sausage is dried until around 30% in weight is lost.
- Store sausages at 10-15º C (50-59º F), < 75% humidity.
