Salsa de chorizo

Breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack – deliciously practical!

Out of the small collection of foods that, regardless where you are in Latin America, this one will relentlessly find its way to you. Out of the key group of dishes to better understand our Latino culture via this appetite for an exuberant palate, this staple one will show you why it’s survived up to nowadays.

Out of one of the basic items of our cuisine, you’ll get a delicious full meal of after fifteen to twenty minutes, chorizo (a peculiar type of pork sausage) is the way to go. In fact, another way to fairly describe this type of sausage is versatile, not only because of the extensive variety you can actually find out there, but also because there is a gazillion recipes to make so that you can enjoy it endlessly.

But how did chorizo originate? Although it can somehow be traced back to ancient Greece, chorizo gets its very colour and flavour, its traditional Spaniard savoury aroma from the sixteenth century when the red bell peppers brought from the Americas – ironically – were integrated to the formula in Spain naturally. Now to put things into perspective and get a glimpse of how prolific this kind of sausage has become, only in Spain, there are at least 15 different kinds of chorizos! On the other hand – surprise – Latin America has, in chorizo, one of the building blocks of its gastronomy.

In my case, as far back as I can remember, it’s always been there everywhere, permeating the whole social culinary experience – be it at a special artsy gala served on fancy trays as tapas (snack or appetizer in Spaniard cuisine), having a sandwich at a street food stand, or everything in-between.

In Edmonton, as some of you might’ve already noticed, there are a fair amount of local producers, grocery stores, and restaurants where to find it regularly, and enjoy it in different styles, from different countries – you name it.

A great place, also, to try it out would be the Heritage Festival but, not so much this year at least. Happily, since many of us got to Canada, chorizo has become more and more popular. Try them out in your barbeques; it’ll make an excellent addition to your meat!

Having said that, let’s get hands-on with our salsa de chorizo recipe brought to you on this occasion since it is really easy to make, cost-effective and we think you’ll have a lot of fun making and devouring it because, by all means, we did, too!

One last thing, hot peppers were not used for this one time although it’s quite common to find them as a quintessential part of this dish. But indeed, I’d even actually suggest that you use chipotle pepper because it really gives quite a smoky taste – but, it’s totally up to you, making it part of your very version – or, the more “traditional” serrano peppers, a small one should do. If you really want to go spicy, use one or two medium ones. Either way you’d have to add them at the same time that you add the onions.

Also, if you want to add cheese to give it a flip, I 100% encourage you to do it. It absolutely adds a perfect layer of flavour and nice texture: go mozzarella or if possible Oaxaca cheese. Lastly, you can make this go with corn or flour tortillas, you can’t go wrong with either or.

Ingredients

250 grams of chorizo (soft or shreddable)

3 medium-size tomatoes

1 medium size white onion

[Optional]

250 grams of Mozzarella cheese

Tortilla chips (as much as you think You’d need)

1 Medium size Serrano Pepper (If you like spiciness) or half a chipotle pepper

Corn or Flour Tortillas (as much as you think You’d need)

Steps:

1. Get your frying pan going on medium heat.
2. Shred the chorizo – in case you don’t have a soft one – and put it aside.
3. Cut the onion into rings and put them aside.
4. Dice the tomatoes and put them on the side.
5. Throw the chorizo in the frying pan, look for any chunks to break them apart, even them out so that they cover all the frying pan, cover the pan, and fry for 8 minutes on medium heat.
6. Throw in the onions and mix. Cover the pan and wait for 5 mins. or until your onion rings look a bit transparent.
7. Throw in the diced tomatoes and mix. Cover the pan and cook for 8 minutes at medium temperature or until tomatoes look a bit tender and lower the heat half of what you had. By this point, you should see water almost evaporated. If not, wait until you see its level being fairly low.
8. Add 3 oz. of water or ½ a measuring cup right into the middle of your pan and cover it: DO NOT add more or else the flavour will be gone!
9. Let it simmer for another 8 minutes.

10. At this point you can add cheese on top if you want: mozzarella or Oaxaca. Cover the pan, let the chorizo sit so that the cheese melt. You can also get some tortillas going or tortilla chips, avocado, etc. while the dish cools off.

Serve and enjoy!! Let us know how it went or anything about preparing this recipe: we can’t wait to hear from you!

#paraisotropical #mercadolatino #comidalatina #desucocina #chorizo #salsadechorizo #queso #cultura #latinoamerica