Just to wet your appetite, we our going to make our first attempt at making chorizo sausage this evening. We've gathered the ingredients and I finished off by getting hold of some garlic cloves on the way into work this morning.
We have bastardised HFWs recipe from his DVD 'Pig in a Day'. I say this because it isn't really as clear as it could be as to how much of the ingredients he actually puts into his mix and secondly, I've struggled to get hold of some of the more obscure ingredients that he mentions. Mr Ignorance here didn't realise just how many types chilli and pepper there are.
Still, it will be interesting to see how things go.
For people who are unaware, chorizo are actually hung out in an outbuilding somewhere to air dry for a few weeks and are not cooked as such but cured. One of the problems that I have got to address this afternoon, is to actually find a spot where there's a enough through draft to dry them and even more importantly, somewhere where the cat and or the birds can't get at them.
I've been dying to do this for ages, and we'll be using parts of the pig that we had slaughtered last month.
This is an account of what we actully did.
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First of all we started with 3kg or reasonably lean saddleback pork and 500g of back fat.
The next thing we did, was to run the back fat through the mincer.
Followed by the pork.
Then I mixed the two evenly together.
Then I got the ingredients together ready to mix into the mince.
They were
1) 2.2% of the total weight of the meat and fat combined in salt, I'm told this came to 77g
2) 90g of paprika
3) 60g of cayenne pepper
4) 30g of fennel seeds
5) 6 crushed garlic cloves.
Start the mixing :thumbup:
As the actress said to the bishop ! "Its sausage time !"
I know this looks slightly kinky
but its Kaz tying the end of the first sausage out of the stuffer. 
The finished article.
We made quite a few.
A word of warning. This is the first time that we have made these and we'll have to wait at least six weeks or longer to see how they taste.
:q37:
The next picture on this thread will be of Rob and I hanging our sausages in the barn tomorrow morning. :q33:
PS The red wine was used to make the mixing of the mix go easier in two ways
And here they are as promised.
We hung the chorizos to dry this morning thank goodness :thumbup: The smell of the garlic was stinking the study out.
We have a row of four wooden kennels with covered runs and the end one is a spare, so we've used that. The video says that you need some where cool, dry and with a good through put of air. Hopefully the kennel is going to fit the bill.
Here they are hanging, it gives a nice rewarding feeling of satisfaction to see them.
Chorizo update. Heres a picture of the sausages after eight days. Do you think they have changed much ?
Two weeks on and I couldn't resist having a taster.
The sausage was really nice, if a bit fiery but in another couple of weeks or so, I reckon that they'll be out of this world
