This is an amazing smoked sausage from Colombia, that is an instant classic for me--good enough to go in any Top 5 with the likes of Italian, Smoked Polish, Brats, and Texas Beef sausage. My wife tried the test patty and immediately said, "This is like Chinese dumpling filling or shu-mai, love it!" The smoked sausage is even better.
I videotaped the entire process with various tips as I went, which may be helpful or of interest to some, here is the video:
This comes from a Colombian using name "I-am-Chorizo" on smokingMeatForums.com. He was proud of this local "export quality" sausage, and thankfully took the time to share it with us! It was tried and absolutely loved by several experienced folks there, who tweaked it. SmokinEdge added red wine, which is in many, most, smoked South American sausage or chorizo as it's called there. DougE and BrianGSDTexoma added their tests and notes, and geostriata added his always precise and complete notes and comments.
Their universal glowing reports made me try it, and yes, it really is an awesome taste that will now be one of my standard Top 5 when making. Try it!
SmokinEdge used roasted garlic instead of fresh or granulated. I made some roasted garlic soup to check, and decided yep I like it but not as much as fresh garlic. I've made a lot of smoked Polish sausage where garlic is the dominant flavor, and find I actually like the granulated garlic better. So I used that.
I used a 6mm grind, 1/4 inch. I know that I-am-Chorizo emphasized diced chunks of show-meat for texture, but I have done that a lot in Polish sausage and find I like the uniformity and tight bind from a smaller grind much more. You could go 10mm with half frozen meat for a larger chunkier texture. I loved this texture.
I used a 32-35mm hog casing. Was using up an older LEM pack, not my favorite and seemed tougher than my standard Butcher Pantry hog casings, so I rinsed and "inflated" with water and soaked with some baking powder forbseveral hours. I did 8" links.
This sausage is pretty unique. Marianski brothers cover 25 or 30 "chorizo", Spanish for sausage, in their 1001 Sausage Recipe book. About half are fresh, and half are smoked. Only one was very close to this spice profile with onion and garlic dominant, but also paprika and cumin. It also had the cilantro that I I-am-Chorizo added to his local standard. This was a Chorizo Cubano, but it was a fresh sausage, so all the incredible smoky goodness is missing. All rest had oregano, allspice, and other strong spices. So YES, this is in fact surprisingly unique, and not just a re-label of something common.
Recipe for 1kg of meat. Spices expressed as a % of meat weight.
1000 g pork shoulder, approx 20% fat
-- 6mm to 10mm grind
1.5% salt, 15 g
0.15% black pepper, 1.5g
0.23% paprika, 2.3g
0.26% cumin, 2.6g
0.44% granulated garlic, 4.4g
1-2 chopped green onions, 15g
cilantro, chopped, 7g
3% red wine, 30ml
0.25% cure1, 2.5g
0.05% sodium erythorbate, 0.5g
400mg Vitamin c, ascorbic acid
Observed FSIS Limits from Processing Inspectors Calculation Handbook are:
--cure1 sodium nitrite, max 156ppm
(I-am-Chorizo used less, I went with full allowed 2.5g cure1 per kg meat as I mixed/stuff/smoke in one day so wanted to ensure good curing)
--sodium erythorbate, max 547ppm
--vitaminC, max 469ppm
Smoke schedule:
100f dry AZ, 30 min to dry
140f 3 hrs with cherrywood smoke
150f 3 hrs to an Internal Temp of 137. Still light smoke.
(After 135f reached in all 4 probes, held for 40 min more to achieve Appendix A Log7 pathogen lethality).
At this point, these were completely done, zero fat out due to low cook temps, though that did increase the needed color and IT time to 6 hrs. I sliced one and tested, and lightly fried slices...YUMMM!
I decided I wanted the IT a bit higher, so I vacuum packed them and sous-vide at 145f for 40min. Then I tossed packs in ice bath. This also in-bag pasteurizes for extra long fridge life, as well as tenderizes the casing a bit. There was zero fat-out or grease detected in bags after:
Thanks very much to all for this great sausage, and I hope my video or this post is helpful to some ;)
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