Jalapeno & cheddar in a smoked beef sausage

That is a long title for a sausage, and that isn't even the whole title.

It is worth remembering though.

A while back, not too long ago, late 2012, Kiolbassa of San Antonio introduced the Kiolbassa Jalapeno & Cheddar Beef Smoked Sausage.

Kiolbassa Jalapeno & Cheddar Smoked Sausage

I've had sausage that was infused with cheddar cheese before, or jalapeno, but not both. You might be tempted to say, well, it's kind of gimmicky and yeah there's something to that. You could just chop and add the jalapeno and cheddar. But it does save a couple steps, so this is part convenience and part ... well, quality.

The fact is, Kiolbassa isn't going to go cheap on the ingredients. You chomp into this and you get the real thing. You can taste the cheddar and feel the heat of the jalapenos.  I recommend it, if you can get it. Like most Kiolbassa products, availability outside of Texas is limited.  But they're working on that and you can always have it shipped.

What's for dinner?  I made a plate with rice and vegetables and black bean soup.

The rice:  Chop yellow bell pepper, carrots in coin slices, and a green (I used sliced poblano pepper). I boiled three cups of water for 1.5 cups of white rice. That's enough for four heaping servings, maybe more.
After the water comes to boil (with salt, butter, 2 cloves chopped garlic, and cilantro for seasoning), I added the rice.
A couple minutes later, I poured in topped the boiling rice with a small bowl full of the aforementioned vegetables.

That was the easy part. Beans always take hours. This batch, I made with chopped garlic, a chicken broth bullion cube, and a couple of chopped chipotle peppers.

As for the sausage. I would normally grill it, but since it is infused with chedder cheese, I decided I'd rather cook it inside out fast. So I put it in the microwave for a minute.  Be careful with microwaves and sausages; you can turn them leathery if they're in too long or the power is too high.  Mine came out just right.

Buen provecho!

Kiolbassa invades Florida!

Kiolbassa Provision Company, one of my favorite Texas sausage and chorizo companies, is making its way into Costco Wholesale stores in Florida.

Kiolbassa Beef Smoked sausage at Costco

Floridians will not see Kiolbassa's full line of products, but this is a good start.

I do hope Floridians appreciate what's coming their way.

What is now available is the pork smoked, and beef smoked sausages.  I notice the lengths of the links in Costco are longer.

Texas sausage links are typically the length of a hot dog bun. But Floridians are more used to seeing sausage as packaged by Garcia brand from Dutch Packing Company in Miami, or from a number of sausage makers in Georgia that have enjoyed strong market share in Florida for some time now.

These Kiolbassa offerings are not much different from what Floridians are accostumed to seeing.  Maybe the idea is to show non-Texans a familiar comfort food?

I am looking forward to the day Florida will see some Texas styles that are more Texas than mainstream, such as mesquite smoked or beef with jalapeno.

Slice Kiolbassa sausage with Alma's pasta

The company announcement says Kiolbassa's Costco connection reaches across the Southeast and into Puerto Rico.

Fifty-three Costco stores from Atlanta to Miami, including four stores in Puerto Rico, are carrying the San Antonio-based Kiolbassa Provision Company product line, according to Kiolbassa President Michael Kiolbassa.

Kiolbassa is also in Costco stores in Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina, as part of this expanded deal with Costco’s.
Kiolbassa is one of the healthiest sausages on the grocery shelf. These are choice meats with fresh spices, no fillers, no MSG, naturally smoked and gluten free. They have the lowest sodium content among all national competitors.

Hey, if the flavors are genuine, you don't have to disguise your product with a lot of salt.

“Our premium products continue to attract customers and reinforce our company philosophy of Passion Makes Perfect, as consumers demand quality products for their hard-earned grocery dollars,” explains Kiolbassa, 50, who is the third generation Kiolbassa to lead the family-owned company that has been featured on the Food Network.

Costco stores will carry the company’s signature All Beef premium smoked sausage, considered the sausage-lover’s sausage because of its unique “chop” bite and richly smoked flavor achieved through small batch production using a time-honored recipe that draws on the family’s strong Polish roots. Kiolbassa was founded in 1949.

This year alone, the 25,000-sq.-ft. Texas plant expects to produce more than 12 million lbs. of sausage to be sold in 1,255 stores in 25 states, Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Now, for some eats!

I made a spaghetti entre with a portion of this batch. But when I decided on spaghetti, I had not figured on being out of tomato paste, so I invented a sauce. This sauce involved a couple of large tomatoes, a chopped poblano pepper, a couple of very finely chopped chipotle (morita) peppers, a finely chopped ancho, a couple of cloves chopped garlic, some chopped onion (quantity to your taste; some people aren't too keen on a lot of onion), and finally, a couple of stalks of chopped celery.

I put all of the above ingredients in a blender, except the celery. I grilled the sliced up beef sausage, then tossed in the sauce with chopped celery and a little water. Easy on the water; you don't want your sauce too thin.

While all this is happening, I boiled angel hair pasta.  Let it boil for six minutes.  Angel hair cooks fast and you want to keep it al dente. Then rinse and put in a separate hot pan with olive oil to keep it from sticking.

I did not use mushrooms this time. But if you want it to have an earthier taste, that's a good idea. Now doesn't this look good? Buen provecho!

El Mexicano Beef Chorizo flunks Fooducate

The old say, "You get what you paid for," comes to mind when I opened up a package of El Mexicano Beef Chorizo.
There may be a manufacturer's website for this low-grade chorizo.  But after scrolling down a couple of Google search pages, it did not present itself.
It is easier to find retail sites that sell and it health site and criticize it. Fooducate was not impressed. It gave the chorizo a D+ overall, noting that it is very high in cholesterol, nitrites and nitrates, and "one of the worst products in its category.

El Mexicano Beef Chorizo

 I bought this chorizo because it was really cheap, 99 cents for a 9-oz. link at the HEB in San Antonio.

However, once you heat it on a grill, the portion shrinks away.  Most of it is grease that you would be well advised to let drip off the pan into the garbage.

Fool that I was, I left most of it on the grill to soak into the peppers and eggs.

To some extent, all chorizos are really more of a seasoning than an actual protein portion, but this is ridiculous.

It will give a breakfast taco flavor, I'll give it that. But if you're looking for something more substantial, or a meat product that won't have your doctor scolding you, try something else.