{"id":42,"date":"2009-01-17T02:27:46","date_gmt":"2009-01-17T02:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/?p=42"},"modified":"2009-01-17T02:27:46","modified_gmt":"2009-01-17T02:27:46","slug":"home-made-chorizo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/2009\/01\/17\/home-made-chorizo\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Made Chorizo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>(At left, chorizo filler meat.)<\/em> If you go to any Basque event in the US, one thing you will always find is chorizo. In Boise, instead of hotdog vendors, they sell chorizo on the street corners. And there are a number of meat packers that mass produce Basque-style chorizo. But, in my opinion, nothing beats home-made.<\/p>\n

My dad has been making his own chorizo for maybe 20 years now.\u00a0 He never had time when I was a kid, but once I was off to college, he started making both chorizo and ham, in the jamon serrano style.\u00a0 Both are excellent and he and the guys he makes them with have gained a reputation.\u00a0 The annual chorizo-making effort has grown and is an event in and of itself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>(The vets — Tony, Ramon and my dad Pedro — with the final product.)<\/em> Even though I’ve had the luxury of feasting on dad’s chorizo and ham for a while now, I’ve never actually participated in helping make them.\u00a0 This year, during the Christmas holidays when we were visiting Idaho, I finally got a chance.\u00a0 A six-man crew, including my dad, Tony Larrocea, Ramon Ocamica (the veteran crew), Steve Zatica, Rick Uria, and Stan Zatica, met at Rick’s shop.\u00a0 A few days earlier, they had mixed together the meat.\u00a0 I unfortunately missed this all-important step, so I don’t have a good feel for what the “secret” recipe is.\u00a0 Suffice it to say that I did learn that they use the legs so as to ensure that there is enough meat in the filling.\u00a0 On the day I showed up, they had 5 buckets of filling ready for stuffing in the casings.\u00a0 And away we went.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Tony and Stan, at left, manned the stuffer, filling the casings with the chorizo meat.\u00a0 Rick, Ramon, and Steve tied the filled casing into sausage-length segments with string.\u00a0 I helped a bit with that and with poking the casings with a safety pin to release any trapped air.\u00a0 My dad, as his legs were bothering him, began preparing the feast we would enjoy afterwards.<\/p>\n

I don’t remember now how long we were there, but it was the better part of the afternoon into the evening.\u00a0 I’m guessing I was there for something like 5 hours (and I arrived a bit late too).\u00a0 I think, all told, they made 300 pounds of chorizo, about 60 pounds each (I think Tony donated his services for the evening).\u00a0 Once we were done, we had a feast fitting of the Basques, consisting of port ribs, solomo (pork loin prepared Basque style), home-made bread, courtesy of Teresa, Tony’s wife, and stew, all accompanied by good drink.\u00a0 We topped off the meal with several desserts, courtesy of Rick’s family. It was an excellent way to end the day and celebrate our efforts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(The full crew — Tony, Rick, Ramon, Pedro, and Steve, standing, and Stan, kneeling — at right.)<\/em> Once the chorizos were finished, they let them sit in the shop, slightly heated (maybe 70 degrees, I think), for a few days to dry out.\u00a0 Again, I was lucky enough to still be in town to get to try a few, just a few days after they were made.\u00a0 And they were excellent!\u00a0 One of the best batches yet.\u00a0 Dad made sure to send me home with enough to tide me over until the next time I make it back to Homedale.<\/p>\n

The whole experience was great.\u00a0 While I’m a carnivore, and enjoy meat, I’m not a hunter, and have never really participated in any way in the production, if you will, of the food I eat.\u00a0 So, it was a good experience for me to get into the nitty-gritty, at least a little, and help make one of my favorite foods.\u00a0 They always say that one thing you should never observe is how sausage is made.\u00a0 And, while I missed the step that is most likely the origin of that saying, I definitely became even more appreciative of chorizo and what goes into making them.<\/p>\n

Eskerrik asko, jaunak!\u00a0 Thanks for letting me take part!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(At left, chorizo filler meat.) If you go to any Basque event in the US, one thing you will always find is chorizo. In Boise, instead of hotdog vendors, they sell chorizo on the street corners. And there are a number of meat packers that mass produce Basque-style chorizo. But, in my opinion, nothing beats […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2sYNu-G","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}