Fermented Chorizo
This is a fairly simple chorizo which is fermented. The flavour comes from the paprika and that’s just about everything apart from the pepper.
2 kg Pork shoulder
250 g pork back fat
50g Sweet paprika
10 g garlic crushed
5 g ground black pepper
25g curing salt
150 ml red wine (chilled)
3g glucose
1 g starterculture
Use hog skins at around 32 mm
Chill, dice and roughly grind the pork with the medium plate in the grinder. Then return to the fridge.
Dice the back fat into 4 – 6 mm pieces, about 1/4 inch
Add the starter to about 4 tablespoons of warm water.
Completely combine all the ingredients and stuff into hog skins, linking at around 30 cm / 12 inches.
Keep the sausage warm for 24 hours, and then hang for about a month in relative humidity of 75% or less, and a temperature of around 12 C.
There are a number of checks you can do to make sure the chorizo is working well.
Acidity
On the whole, the sausage should start at about pH 7. As the starter microbes work in the acidity should increase (and therefore the pH number should decrease) so by the month end it should be around pH5.
Weight
The sausage should lose weight by evaporation of water. The weight loss should be around 30%. So weigh the sausage after the 24 hours incubation period and then again when you think it is ready.
By juantiagues from Pontevedra, España (Chourizos de Mosteiro) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons