Chourico

Chourico is the Portuguese cousin of Chorizo — with a deeper voice and a smokier complexity. This has little in common with the boring crumbled taco filling you may have experienced. Expectations reset.

This recipe is modeled after the Chourico of southern New England's Portuguese communities — the kind that has been made the same way for generations and that anyone who grew up with it will recognize immediately. The flavor is bold with measured heat, and the rendered fat it leaves behind is worth preserving. Fry eggs in it, add a spoonful to a pot of chili, or stir it into a spicy soup and the dish will tell you everything you need to know about why Portuguese cooks have never thrown it away.

It comes two ways. Cased in links is the traditional format — grill them, slice them into a pan sauce, or simmer them whole in a pot of Portuguese Kale Soup where the sausage slowly perfumes the broth with smoked paprika until every spoonful tastes like it has been cooking all day. The loose is the same recipe without the casing, ready to crumble and brown for the best tacos of your life, roll into small meatballs for Portuguese Kale Soup, or press into patties for any occasion.

Cased: four links per full one pound back. Loose: one full pound pack.

If you are building Portuguese meals at home, your chourico bolognese wants our bone broth and ground beef, the kale soup wants our smoked ham hocks, and our pasture raised eggs are best fried in the drippings once your sausage is cooked.

Ingredients: Pasture Raised Pork from Wishbone Heritage Farms, Spices from the Charleston Spice Company: Yakima Sea Salt, Flake Sea Salt, Paprika, Smoked Paprika, Cayenne, Birdseye Cayenne, Garlic, Marjoram, Lemon Peel. Pork Casing (Links Only). Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Sugar Free, No Nuts.