My first javelina to make it home arrived last night in the form of 4 - 2" X 12" frozen tubes of chorizo. They stayed frozen in my luggage, well insulated by dirty clothes, for the 6 hours or so of the trip. Fortunately, the weather was cool all day.
I left one tube out in the refrigerator to thaw overnight and put the rest into the freezer. I fried some this morning and put it on top of eggs. Ruiz's Custom Meats in Laredo did a good job of making the chorizo, and there was no gamey taste at all.
It was a little too spicy for me, and since breakfast I have been thinking of ways to prepare the rest in ways that will tone it down a little. Someone who doesn't mind the heat and Mexican spices might like it fine just the way it is. But one idea I had was to make tacos with half chorizo and half ground beef, or to put half chorizo and half ground beef in spaghetti sauce. I would welcome hearing from anyone who has other ideas about cooking with chorizo other than just frying it straight out of the package.
:campfire: mix it in with your ground meat next time you make burgers. It's really tasty.
Took some of south Texas home with ya, that's great!
Should also mix great in Tacos, with Chili, or stew.
Sounds good on homemade pizza.
Don't know about chorizo, but I often add ground venison with Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage and use it for breakfast sausage. 1:1 ratio.
Dave:
I take my javelina home in the form of Ruiz's chorizo most years. Here are a few things I do when I cook it.
1. When I make it with eggs, I add some shredded cheese in the last couple of minutes before I am done cooking. The melted cheese cuts some of the spiciness.
2. I mix it with refried beans in the frying pan and fry the beans and chorizo together.
3. Cook the chorizo, refried beans, cheese, and some mild salsa together and use it as a dip, or top your eggs with that mix. That is very good...actually amazing.
Tell your butcher to cut the spices in half
Thanks guys, all good ideas that I will try. Started with one idea of my own today during the Super Bowl. Made a chile con queso dip, but rather than using ground beef, I used half ground beef and half chorizo, and left out the chiles I would normally put in, because there are already plenty of chiles in the chorizo. Tasted great!
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Ive made lots of Javelina sausage of all types. After grinding it, we always mixed 1:1 with ground pork, then add seasonings. Before packaging we take some and fry it to check for taste. You can always add more seasonings if desired. We usually found that it required a little more garlic. Each year we would process 4-10 javelina. By adding the fresh ground pork it made it a little more mild and also increased the volume. Check your area for someone that makes spices for meat or you can order them online.
Chicken and chorizo burritos are outstanding. Add a little rice, avocado and tomato.
If that doesn't work, you could throw it in a cooler with some dry ice and ship it to NJ. :biglaugh:
Do you like the overall flavor but just find it too spicy? My suggestion would be to buy either a pork shoulder or already ground pork and dilute your chorizo with that starting at about 25% added pork and going from there.
If you have something like a large stainless bowl, open up just one package of your chorizo and kinda crumble it into the bowl. You want to break it up loosely. Next, I'd simply add (eyeball it or weigh it your choice) about 1/4 that amount in fresh pork. Do the same thing where you try to crumble the ground pork into the bowl loosely. It's very possible that your chorizo has been mixed by the butcher until it's no longer loose but is sticky but at least the pork burger should crumble nicely. Toss it all with a couple spoons like a salad or by hand to mix in the "loose state" then start kneading it like dough until very well mixed. After several minutes, it should get extremely sticky to where it won't fall away from your hands.
Test fry a sample and see what you think. Adjust as needed by either adding more fresh pork or more of the chorizo.
Couple things to keep in mind, all sausage recipes are different but two key things are the salt and added water. Both are generally x amount per pound. Salt can really effect the flavor so it's important to get that right but it ain't rocket science either, simply salt to taste. Buuuut... salt alone may not make up for the diluting of the entire flavor spice profile. Looking up a couple chorizo recipes will give you an idea of what spices you might need. You may need to add things like garlic or paprika to boost the flavors that are there in addition to the spicy heat but if you really prefer a mild flavor you may only need a little salt. I'll pull up a youtube video for you by a guy named Duncan Henry who makes tons of sausage recipe videos and really explains things well. Be warned, he uses the metric system so everything can be measured as a percentage (or grams per kilogram) by simply moving the decimal point. This allows you to make literally ANY size batch and it tastes exactly the same. If you've never made any sausage at all, he has some more entry level videos that really explain the process and why you do what you do. Careful though or you may soon be spending money on things like grinders, presses, smokers etc but hey, it's a really fun hobby and you can easily process your own deer or hogs into any kind of sausage you want. He even has videos on making jerky.
Anyway, this is getting way longer than I intended so I'll stop. I'll go find a link or two and post them bellow.
Here's Duncan Henry making chorizo.
https://youtu.be/hbuir8w98K8?si=tr3dttqmbRhcSQGZ
If you get on his channel and start just watching videos you will start seeing the similarities of methods. Pay attention to whenever he explains things like fat ratios, adding water and how much to mix the meat.
Notice too that he frequently talks about recipes as not being hard and fast but rather a starting point. He encourages you to tweak any recipe to your taste. If you use metric measures it becomes REALLY easy to keep track of changes and duplicate them later.
Here's a kinda beginner sausage making video that explains the basis concepts in general.
https://youtu.be/Va5rLBNiG9M?si=7sIQgyxw05WuX0pE
Thanks Dave, that really helps a lot!
try making some in to German Sausage. My favorite!