Chori-Pollo: "It tastes like chicken."

Chori-Pollo, a chicken meat-based chorizo from Toluca Mexican Style Food Products in Baltimore, Md., is a novelty in the realm of chorizo offerings.

Que Rico Chori-Pollo by Toluca

Kind of like soy-based chorizos, Chori-Pollo isn't what most people think of when they have chorizo in mind. The standard chorizo is made with pork, and some aficionados consider beef chorizo a "high end" version; chorizo producers certainly charge more for the beef.

Toluca uses traditional Mexican spices with its chicken chorizo, but there's no getting away from the fact that it's chicken. It tastes like chicken, not that there's anything wrong with that.

This dish was put together with white onion, red bell pepper, queso fresco and eggs. We cooked black beans with a ham hock and then mashed them with milk and butter to have mashed beans (refried without the lard) as a side.

By the way, cooking black beans with a meaty ham hock--can't go wrong. It's delicious.

A few observations about cooking with Chori-Pollo. One, it is not as greasy as a pork meat and there's really no grease to drain. In fact, I used more cooking oil and butter than I would have otherwise to keep the onion and bell pepper (and later the eggs) from sticking and burning.

Two, the color contrast is startling. The chicken meat is so light colored that once you break it up in the skillet, it almost looks like the egg is already stirred in.

Mix in the egg and cheese (queso fresco) last. I made enough to serve four, so I used three links and four eggs.

If you've been to this site before, you've noticed I'm generally not specific about ingredient amounts. I've found everyone has a different opinion on how much of any one thing they want. I like a lot more onion and bell pepper than some, and I tend to go easy on the eggs.

I topped this dish with a little bit of salsa.

Buen provecho!

Chori-Chicharron: mixing a Toluca style chorizo with pork cracklin

Having recently received a package of Toluca Mexican Style Food Products from their base in Baltimore, Md., I started by experimenting with the Salvadoran and Argentinian brands.

I was saving the Mexican style pork product for later.  And having built up my sense of anticipation, I have not been disappointed.

So many chorizo products on the market stuff the casing with byproducts and melt away when cooked.  That has not been there case here. 

Que Rico brand Mexican Uncooked Chorizo holds up in the skillet as well as the Kiolbassa Provision Company products found in Texas.  That is high praise.  I can assure customers in the Que Rico markets (Northern Virginia to New York) that they are purchasing a high grade product.

This recipe mixes the Mexican style with pork cracklin.  You can use pork rind but then you'll probably want to crumble it first by lightly crushing it in your fist.

Some cooks just throw the pork rind in whole, but that isn't my personal preference. I think the pieces are too big when they soften.  However, pork rind softens faster than cracklin, so if you're in a hurry go for it.

What we have here on the right is a package of Que Rico chorizo with a couple of cups of cooked white rice, cracklin, onion and poblano.

If you follow my blog, you know that I rarely mention exact portions.  You know how fond you are of onion, or poblano pepper or anything else.  I'll leave it to you to decide how much you want.

I like a lot of vegetables, so the portions are similar in my dishes to what you might expect to find in a serving of Chinese stir fry.  Chop however much onion and poblano you want and set it off to one side.

For this dish, I pressed one link of chorizo onto a medium hot skillet and mashed it down with a fork, but making sure to keep it in one piece.  This chorizo can take the heat.  It's not like some cheap chorizos that burn easily, so don't worry too much about how long it's on the skillet.

Once it's burn turned over a couple of times, pour out the excess grease. Now pin down and tear up the chorizo into small pieces.

Lower the heat, pour in a third cup of water and two handfuls of pork cracklin and put a lid on.  Let it simmer for a few minutes so that the cracklin softens.

Raise the heat a little, until most of the water has evaporated.  Put in an tab of butter to make sure the vegetables and rice don't stick.  Stir in the vegetables and rice, stirring frequently until they vegetables are slightly cooked and the rice has evenly turned color by soaking up the spices and grease that have been released from the chorizo.

You should end up with this, a Mexican-style stir fry of chorizo, softened cracklin and vegetables with rice.

It makes a tasty, nutritious entrée for lunch or dinner.

Of course, chorizo is more commonly considered a breakfast food.

One of our favorite and simplest recipes for a breakfast chorizo is to mix it with a can of RoTel diced tomatoes and green chiles.  I also crush a couple of chipotle chiles and mix that in.

Let's get started!

I was making breakfast for three, so I used two links of the Que Rico Toluca style Mexican and mashed them into a medium to low heated skillet.

I opened a can of RoTel and emptied the water.  You may want to keep the water, depending on how juicy you like your topping.

Break up the chorizo into small chunks and then pour in the RoTel and chipotle flake and stir until evenly mixed.

Set it aside or keep a lid on it and leave it simmering on very low heat.

Now start another skillet on heat and spread butter on the surface.

Crack an egg into the skillet.  Cook it to your preference and flip.  We're making eggs over easy.

While this is going on, heat some corn tortillas on a comal, or not.  I prefer to have a side of tortillas myself.  We also had a side of refried beans with this meal, but that's also optional.

This is what the diced chorizo and RoTel should look like in the skillet:

Slide the eggs over easy to a dinner plate and top them with as much chorizo and RoTel as you want!

I like to heap the toppings on generously.

This was my breakfast plate on the left below:

Buen provecho!

Adventures a la Argentinian

Creamy Dreamy Taco

 Recently, we received a shipment from Toluca Mexican Food Style Products from their home office in Baltimore, Md.

I've been experimenting lately with the Argentinian chorizo.  Based as I am in San Antonio, Texas, however, a few of my housemates tried sampling a couple of links on their own--cooking them with diced potatoes.

They gave the chorizo a "C" grade. But I didn't see how it was prepared and disagreed with the grade. I suggested that wasn't the proper test.

First, they needed to keep in mind that--as Mexican-Americans--our preconception of chorizo is northern Mexican/southwest American, which this is not. It tastes very different. And while pairing Mexican chorizo with potato is very traditional, I've no idea how Argentinians do it.

I do know that Argentinians likes to mix ground beef or pork with green olives and raisins. That is a common way for them to stuff an empanada and they're delicious.

I find that pairing South American chorizos with cooked or raw red bell pepper is best and I recommend that as an essential basic pairing. Once you have those two together, you can experiment with a lot of things.

I offered to make breakfast tacos for Valentine's Day and prepared the last link in the following manner.  I chopped one chipotle pepper (also known as morita on the East Coast), and set it aside.  I removed the casing of the chorizo link and put it in a semi-hot skillet with two slices of bacon and pressed the chorizo and bacon into the skillet, occasionally turning the three pieces over until the bacon was browned and the chorizo was fully cooked, but still in one piece.

chorizo, bacon, chipotle, poblano and red bell peppers

I pinned the chorizo and two bacon slices to an inner edge of the skillet with a fork, tipped up the skillet and poured the excess grease into an empty yogurt cup (toss it later).  I then sprinkled the chipotle flake into the skillet with a quarter cup of water and began tearing the chorizo and bacon into small bits.

Que Rico Argentinian Chorizo from Toluca

I had previously chopped red bell pepper and fresh poblano pepper.  Once the chorizo and bacon was diced up, I poured in the chopped fresh peppers with a tab of butter and stirred occasionally until the peppers were slightly blistered.

I then put in five fresh whole eggs and a quarter cup of chopped queso fresco with a few dashes of salt and stirred constantly to make sure the eggs got well stirred and fluffed.

This provided at least two tacos servings a piece for five people. The Argentinian chorizo critics changed their minds.  They very much liked these tacos.  I found them to have a creamy flavor with the bacon and peppers coming across prominently and the chorizo offering a subtle earthy note.

Argentinian Chorizo in a Dinner Recipe

Earlier in the week, I prepared a dinner with boiled yuca on the side.  This turned out very well, but I must warn that boiling yuca is a chore.  Also known as cassava or manioc, the yuca is more dense than potato and takes considerably longer to boil.

I dice the yuca into small sections and put it in a pot with a lid and keep it in shallow water; this requires repeatedly topping off the water so that the pot does not dry out. Stir it regularly; yuca when boiled becomes very viscous. It looks like it's smothered in glue (or gravy, depending on your point of view).  If you don't stir, it will stick to the bottom of the pot. Boil it for about 90 minutes and let it boil down until it is not too watery.  The yuca will keep it's shape unless you mash it; stirring won't break it down they way a potato might after that much work.

With this particular side, I added a Habanero seasoning from Desert Gardens Chile & Spice Co. when I started the boiling process.  That gave it a great taste. I often prefer yuca to potato because it holds its shape and has a natural buttery flavor.

The main entrée was put together very simply.  I cooked the chorizo first, breaking it up after I drained the excess grease. Then I added a generous portion of red bell pepper and cooked that until the pieces blistered during the stirring.

I topped the chorizo and red bell with fresh avocado chunks and queso fresco.

Buen provecho!

P.S.  Toluca products are very good quality, but their market is presently within the Northeast.  If you're anywhere south or west of Virginia, you'll have to order by mail.









A taste of Toluca in Baltimore

Finding chorizo products east of the Appalachian Mountains can be a challenge.

Most authentic Mexican chorizos are not marketed that far east.  Having lived in South Florida 4 1/2 years, I learned first-hand how limited chorizo brands can be.

Even though South Florida has huge Latin American populations, the brands available come down to a few imports from Mexico, some local version from Miami-Dade County and La Banderita out of Valdosta, Ga.

Then I was contacted by Paulino Garcia, founder of Toluca Mexican Style Food Products in Baltimore, Md.  Paulino and his wife Yolanda launched the company in 1996.

In the early 1990s, Paulino was doing market analysis for McCormick Pesa, SA de CV México.  McCormick was considering launching a line of chorizo seasonings so that consumers could make their own chorizo from scratch.

As Mr. Garcia states on his website, "While the market research was being conducted, Mr. Garcia noticed that there was a small presence, if any, of the actual Mexican chorizo."

Today, Toluca Mexican Style Food Products are sold in Maryland, Northern Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.  Their customers are predominantly immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Argentina and Colombia.

The Garcias have recipes indigenous to each region.

"The meat we use for our pork products is boneless butts, pick nick, shoulder or trimmings, 80-20, depending on the availability in the market," Garcia said. "The only preservatives we use are BHA, BHT and citric acid.  As you know, when nitrite is in chorizo, by USDA regulations, it isn't considered fresh because nitrite is a curing agent."

The Garcias also make a chicken chorizo made of boneless thighs.  The entire product line includes a Regular Mexican Chorizo-Mild Hot; a Jalapeno Mexican Chorizo (of course, it's hotter); Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran chorizos--all of these are not spicy.

Catering to South Americans, they also provide Argentinian and Colombian styles, also not spicy.

   

"We have a letter of warranty from all our ingredient suppliers on file, following USDA regulations.  We use dry ingredients that have been analyzed to comply with the levels of bacteria allowed by USDA regulation.  We do not use any fresh spice because the control of the bacteria is really hard to keep in check," Garcia said.

 

The Garcias were kind enough to ship me several samples that I agreed to try.

 

I started with the Salvadoran, which is labeled "Que Rico!!! Salvadorean Uncooked Chorizo."  The flavor profile is different from Mexican and if that's what you're used to, you'll notice the difference right away.

 

This is a quesadilla recipe:

 

• 4 ounces mozzarella cheese, or any Mexican cheese that provides a gummy elasticity when it melts, such as asadero, also referred to as Oaxaca cheese
• 3 chorizo links (remove the casing)
• 4 scallions, finely chopped
• 2 fresh chiles (serrano or jalapeno); those are hot. If you want a milder chile, chop one Poblano or Anaheim or a Cubanelle
• salt and pepper
• olive or vegetable oil for brushing

Make sure all of your vegetables are chopped first.  Then start browning the chorizo on a low heat.  One thing to note here is that this Salvadoran chorizo is not fine ground.  You will need to put a little more effort into breaking down the chunks.  I suggest using a spatula and fork to pin-and-pull the meat.

 

This phase is going to produce plenty of grease.  Once the meat is cooked, spoon it out of the skillet into a bowl with a slotted spoon, then drain the skillet.

 

Start a second burner and heat up your comal for the tortillas.

 

Add a little vegetable oil to the same skillet and quickly stir fry the chopped chiles and add salt and pepper to taste.  Do not cook the scallions.  Now add back the meat and the graded cheese and stir for a couple of minutes.

 

Immediately after you turn the heat off, stir in the chopped scallions.

 

With the comal lightly oiled (just brush the oil on) start heating a tortilla, move it aside and heat a second tortilla.  Pour the ingredients/filling on the second tortilla and put the heated side of the first tortilla on top.  Press, flip and heat.  Once both tortillas are harded, (but not burnt!), slide your quesadilla to a serving plate and start on the next quesadilla.

 

Buen provecho!

 

 

 

 

I am chorizo! (Cacique's soybean chorizo for vegetarians)

Cacique produces a meat-free chorizo that the company labels "Soy Chorizo."

I have to believe the name is an intentional pun, since most chorizo fans have some Spanish literacy and the Spanish word "soy" means "I am."

I've long been aware of Soy Chorizo, but not being vegetarian I had little interest in trying it.  That was a mistake.

While it is obvious that this isn't pork, Cacique did a good job of getting the flavor right.

There are other advantages.

Most pork- or beef-based chorizos are very greasy when cooked and should be drained during the cooking process.  Otherwise, once you stir in your scrambled eggs and whatever other ingredients you choose, they soak up all that cholesterol high grease.

Once I opened the package, I realized -- duh! -- there won't be any grease or cholesterol from this chorizo.

The recipe I went with for this meal involved chopping poblano, red bell pepper and scallions. Normally, I would brown the chorizo first, but since there's no raw meat to cook, I mixed in the chorizo and cut veggies at the same time.

Also, since there is no animal fat, I used a little more vegetable oil than I normally mess with. Cooking time is shorter, since you just want to soften the pepper skins in the skilled before you pour in the egg.

I won't offer an opinion on portion volume. Some people aren't big veggie fans, but I like a lot in my mix.

This is a good-tasting chorizo! I was struck, not just by the taste, but the texture of the soy curd.

It bears a remarkable resemblance to ground meat.

It also spreads very easily. Some meat-based chorizos are not fine ground and have to be broken up in the skillet.

With this particular meal, I broke up and sprinkled queso fresco on top as I made my corn tortilla tacos.

One other thing, the price surprised me. Maybe it was on special that day, but this Cacique brand sold for $1 dollar per 10-ounce tube. That's a good deal! A 10-ounce portion of a quality grade pork chorizo would easily run twice that price or more.

Buen provecho!

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.

Holmes Smokehouse Pecan smoked sausage

Here is a treat!
Pecan-smoked sausages are hard to find, so it was a big surprise to see a Texas-made, pecan-smoked sausage in a Fort Lauderdale, Fl. Publix Super Market.

This is a Holmes Smokehouse sausage.  Founded in 1970 by Luvine Holmes, this little sausage company is based in Rosenberg, Texas.  That's on the old U.S. 90 Highway that got bypassed by Interstate 10.  Rosenberg is a small town, but it's not far  from Houston, and a lot of hard work by the family eventually made Holmes products (they make a wide range of meat products) a hit in the big Bayou City.

Holmes Smokehouse distributes its products in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, so it really was a surprise to find Publix carrying it.  I had not seen it there before, and Florida is apparently a test market for Holmes.  We'll see if it gains any traction, but I'll make sure to ask for it again at my local Publix if it disappears from the shelf.

Holmes Smokehouse Pecan Smoked Sausage from Rosenberg

This sausage is good for any meal time -- breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Right after I opened the package, I cut a three-inch section and put it on medium heat to grill while I chopped green onion, orange bell pepper and white mushrooms.

I added a little butter to one side of the skillet and lightly grilled the vegetables for less than two minutes.  I don't like to cook vegetables too long. I want them al dente (firm but not fresh out of the produce section crunchy).

I then stirred in an egg for a scrambled vegetable omelet.

I got a slice of New York style rye and grilled that on both sides, then I cut the bread in three sections, (think finger food).

Something I noticed about this Holmes sausage is it could take the heat for a long time. I had sliced it across the center, to it cooked from the skin side and the center.  It is common for the interior meat to burn on a skillet surface, so I am used to keeping a close eye on that side.  That did not happen with this sausage and I left it there quite a while.

That was a pleasant surprise.  I'm assuming it tolerated the heat better because it had a higher fat content?  But it did not run grease on the skillet surface the way I usually see grease run, and it does not have the kind of fat marbling that I've seen in other sausages, so I really don't have a good answer.

A single service is described as 2 ounces on the packaging. That is 16 grams, or 25 percent of content.  This is not a pure pork sausage.  The protein content is described as pork, beef and concentrated soy.

Pecan smoked sausage with omelette

Buen provecho!

Blood sausage and alternate realities

If you have never had blood sausage and do not know what it is about, this is a sausage that can really mess with your expectations.
Blood sausage, referred to as morcilla in Latin America and blood pudding in Ireland, is sold in Latino groceries and some mainstream supermarkets with heavy Hispanic traffic. It's not a food item Mexicans have adopted, but other Latin peoples have, especially the Argentinians.
There are some brands that come up from Miami, and San Antonio (to my surprise) has a supplier -- GauchoGourmet.com sells Mr. Tango, a brand I've seen in Florida.
Blood sausage is sold in the refrigerated meat section or butcher shop of a grocery, but it has no meat to speak of. Most of the content is cereal, usually rice or oatmeal. There are spices, but the main ingredient is blood. Depending on the source and the audience, this could be pork, goat or beef blood. Check the label. If it is sold as an Argentinian style, it's beef blood.
European styles use pork blood.
The cereal is soaked with blood and packed into an edible intestine (sausage casing). It is served as an appetizer or as a side to a protein. You steam or oven cook it for about 20 minutes.

As presented here, the blood sausage was used as a topping on a plate of spaghetti.  After leaving the links in the oven for 20 minutes, we mixed them into a skillet where we had mushrooms and onions cooking in olive oil and a couple of dashes of balsamic vinegar.

We then topped this with fresh chopped green onions.

I have to say it was not a satisfying meal. My son prepared the dish on the assumption that the blood sausage was our protein. Even though we knew it was mostly cereal.

We had an unrealistic expectation that the blood would somehow compensate for that feeling you get of biting into meat. But there is no discernible meat. It's mushy and the iron taste of the blood can be overwhelming.

I did a bit more research and decided we didn't use enough onions and we should have had another meat protein. One site I visited had it served with chunks of ham. Another site had it served as a garnish atop a slice of white chicken breast and topped with fried slices of apple and bits of fresh serrano pepper.

Okay! So, lesson learned. Don't expect to fill up on blood sausage. Use it as an appetizer or garnish, or as a side to your main dish.

Finding some Mexican in Georgia

Norcross, Ga., a northwestern suburb of Atlanta, is home to Ole Mexican Foods.

Living in the South Florida communities of Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, my first introduction to Ole Mexican Foods was La Banderita corn tortillas.

If you're in the Southeastern United States, La Banderita is the most common white corn tortilla brand. The major grocery chains like Publix and Winn Dixie do not carry any other brand that is produced this close to Florida.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but the very Latino communities of South Florida depend on most of their Hispanic food items from New York City, New Jersey and Norcross, Ga. There are some items tailored to South American-based communities that get made in Miami or Opa-Locka, but nothing in the Mexican-style.

Ole Mexican Foods' Chorizo Fino Sausage is a standard Mexican-style chorizo. It is ground very fine, so it is easy to break up in the skillet. It doesn't taste as good as the premium Texas-based Mexican chorizos, but it's not a premium chorizo. Nevertheless, it is definitely suitable if you're living on the East Coast.

It does have some shrinkage, but not so much that you end up with nothing but grease. On a scale of one to five stars, I'd give it a respectable three.

I do wish these chorizo makers would dispense with the "natural spices" description on the ingredients list. I'm assuming it has no cayenne. But I compensate with the near unanimous overuse of paprika in East Coast chorizos by adding cayenne and finely chopped fresh poblano pepper. Now we're talking Mexican!

Here is an excerpt on the history of Ole Mexican Foods from their website:

The story of Veronica Moreno and OLÉ Mexican Foods reads like a tale of the American dream realized. Her drive and devotion to her quality products have propelled OLÉ to a level of success few could hope for. From a humble start, Veronica relied on her will to succeed and her devotion to providing authentic tortillas to an eager and growing market. Her family played a big part in that journey, and today they have critical roles in the company. She was supported by them when things were at their toughest. Once when the budget was especially tight, her ten-year-old made the sage comment, “Well, if we don’t get sick this will work.” And work it certainly has! Today, OLÉ Mexican foods is one of the largest tortilla manufacturers in America.

"Mexican Hot Sausage" (not!)

There's something in the Latino groceries of Broward County in Florida that is labelled Ranchero Chorizo Mexicano Hot Sausage, and it is manufactured by National Packing Corp. in Bronx, NY.

The listed ingredients, in order, include: pork, water, salt, guajillo hot peppers, jalapeno peppers, oregano, paprika, soy protein concentrate, annato, spices, sodium phosphate, sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite.

There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to start.  How about this: Don't buy it!

One serving is one 4-ounce link and it has 810 mg of salt.  Maybe that should have been my first clue.  If you need that much salt to make 4 ounces of pork sausage palatable, there's something wrong with your recipe.

The angry Mexican in the sombrero is not a flattering depiction of the culture, but I could overlook that if this was actually Mexican chorizo.  It is nothing of the kind.  This is a cooked sausage.  Mexican chorizo is  raw and you cook it at home.

And the spice blend is completely crazy.

I honestly do not know what this is supposed to be or what the inventor was thinking.  National Packing Corp. has no website that I can find in Google, so they're no help.

My best guess is someone knew something about making Spanish chorizo, which can have paprika as a spice, and thought if they added guajillo and jalapeno peppers to some knock-off Spanish-style recipe that it would pass for Mexican something-something.

And it has oregano! WTF? It's like the inventor couldn't decide whether to go Spanish-style, Italian-style or Mexican, so he/she decided to mash them altogether and hope for the best. This is the opposite of the best.

By the way, annato is seed that is just used for coloring.  Hence, the orange color.

It just tastes wrong. And there's too much paprika. How bad is it? I could smell the paprika in my urine.

I don't know what to do with the two links I still have. Don't let this happen to you.

Uncle John's Pride: country style sausages from Tampa

Some Florida grocers carry select items in the Uncle John's Pride product line.
I haven't found a better sausage plant based in Florida. And outside of a few regional shops that sell only to customers in their neighborhood, I suspect there isn't one.

Uncle John's Pride comes from Crofton and Sons Inc. in Tampa, Fl. This is also home to the Bean Brothers, L & D Meats, and the Peppino's Fresh Sausage brands - none of which I have tried, yet.

The Crofton family has been making Uncle John's Pride for over 30 year. In 1994, Bean Bros. merged with Crofton and Sons, bringing into the company a brand that had been made since 1922 from an old Tennessee family recipe.

Uncle John's Pride is a hickory smoked pork sausage that comes in mild, hot, and jalapeno. The Croftons also offer smoked pork tails, neck bones, hocks, and smoked turkey wings and drumsticks.

I don't know of any grocer, however, that carries their full product line. Publix will carry some of them.

I purchased a Mild Country sausage, and  it turned out to be a fairly good buy. The ground pork appears to be extruded finer than Texas-style sausages, which are generally chunkier. But it's not as fine or homogenous as, say, a hotdog. They've settled somewhere in the middle where the meat still has a slightly coarse texture, but it is more tender when chewed.

There are two simple meals shown here. One is a sampler-style dinner plate of baked beans with lightly grilled sections of sausage, and very lightly grilled sections of sweet red pepper and yellow onion.

I'm a fan of grilled onion, but if you're not, switch that out with some other veggie. There's no bread or rice with this. I figured the baked beans have more than enough carbs as it is.

The second plate is a breakfast plate that uses the sausage as a traditional meat side to the main entree, a serving of pancakes. These pancakes have an unusual color and texture because I added graded carrot to the batter.

It's topped with nectar from the agave, a healthy substitute for honey from bees.

The mild hickory smoked sausage really does make an excellent breakfast sausage. We usually get served breakfast patty sausages that have a strong (I would say overpowering) sage flavor. I do recommend you give it a try, if it is available in your area.

Enjoy!

Singletree Farms Polish Smoked Sausage

J&B Sausage Co. (also known as J Bar B) in Waelder, Texas produces Singletree Farms Polish Smoked Sausage.

This isn't their best product. I have doubts that I would even call it sausage. To their credit, I should mention that J Bar B also makes product for Earl Campbell, who puts out a spicy cajun style sausage I like in cajun rices.

This Polish smoked sausage, however, isn't really anything more than a long hotdog. If you need something to put in a footlong hotdog bun, this ought to do the trick.

It's quite a stretch, though, to call it Polish smoked sausage, especially in Texas where people know what Polish smoked sausage is. This is a hotdog. It tastes like a hotdog and it include chicken, pork and beef products. The chicken, and the notation that it's "skinless" is a dead giveaway that it's a hotdog.

I usually offer a recipe for some dish to make with a sausage I'm reviewing. But I will trust that you know what to do with a hotdog.

Learning about Colombian "chorizo"

Mr. Paisa Colombian style chorizo is made by Jim Food, a Venezuelan-owned company based in Miami. This brand name sausage is packed in Opa-Locka, Fla.

I am reluctant to call this a "chorizo," as that is a type of sausage name I reserve for Mexican or Spanish style sausages that are spiced and colored with some variety of dried red chilis.

It would be easier on consumers if Jim Food would call this "salchicha," also an acceptable Spanish words for sausage.But for Colombians (and I suppose Venezuelans), this is chorizo.

It has a different flavor profile, one that I had to experiment with. Since it is uncooked meat, I treated it like a Mexican chorizo, took it out of its casing and grilled with a little canola oil and some shallots, red hot pepper and mushrooms.

The result was palatable, but it wasn't great. Anyway, this is the dish:

According to Wikipedia, Colombian sausage is traditionally grilled and served with a side of arepa, which is something like a corn pancake with a gooey mozzarella-type cheese in the middle.

I found a really good looking recipe at GlobalGourmet.com. This one involves preparing a Colombian salsa called aji rojo. I'll have to try it sometime. It looks very appetizing.

Mr. Paisa is a rather ambiguous sausage. It says it has pork, green onions, spices and powdered garlic, among other things. The ones I cut open revealed a very coarse pork meat and pork byproducts. I wouldn't do that again. And I'm not to crazy about powdered garlic versus using fresh ingredients, but since there isn't any choice in Colombian sausages (you'll have to go to New York to find South American custom butcher shops), this will have to do.

The Colombian recipe at GlobalGourmet.com says Colombian sausages use garlic, green onions, cumin and cilantro. I've no way of knowing if Mr. Paisa had cumin, but it did have something.

I don't recommend chopping up this Colombian chorizo unless you've got some kind of sauce or salsa to put on it. Hence the aji rojo. Cut open and grilled, it dries out and its flavor profile as a stand alone is not impressive. But, guess what?

This sausage comes in a natural casing. You can just grill it a long time on a low heat. My third attempt at a tasty meal was my best effort. I had a pot of smoky, spicy red beans and that made the difference.

The sausage was grilled on low heat. Just kept rolling it around and kept it simmering. Again, I went with mushrooms, red hot chili and shallots for my veggies, but this time I had a pan that I poured the beans into and cooked them with the beans (red beans that were cooked with a chipotle chili, fresh chopped garlic and salt).

I boiled until the bean soup water that came with the beans was slightly reduced and I had a thicker, saucier gravy-style "soup" in the pan. It helps to mash the beans a little with a big spoon to spread the starch of the beans into the water.

I didn't cut open the sausage until it was cooked on all sides and served onto the plate. Now this is a Latin-style pork and beans!

Buen provecho.

Gaspar's: Since 1923 ... talk about lean

I went to the doctor this week, and one of his staffers, a petite young lady in a blue smock, put me through the indignity of standing on a scale.

After acknowledging the weight gain -NotTellingHowMuch - and going through the 'How do you dos' with a new physician, we discussed exercise and diet, among other things. So, no carbs at dinner time, he says. If you do carbs, consume them before or by noon. 

With that fresh on the mind, I tried a veggie dinner that evening with a small portion of meat. It was okay, but disappointing. Am I going to be disappointed with dinner for the rest of my life? Thinking not.

Second evening after the doctor's visit, I came up with this. It's got carbs, but on a really low scale.

Start with enough water to cover the bottom of a sauce pan. No oil tonight, but there is one level spoonful of starch (Carbs! Yes, I know, but it's just enough to thicken the water. Spinkle in a lot of basil flake and two dashes of soy sauce.

The vegetables:  What we have here is fresh chopped red bell pepper, cabbage, poblano, carrot, onion -- small portions of each. Oh, and one large clove of garlic chopped to bits.

This stews in boiling water-based sauce.

There's also a couple of spoonfuls of diced  tomato and jalapeno that came from a can of Rotel.

The sausage, and this is pure coincidence. I picked a Portuguese sausage, Gaspar's. A smoked sausage from North Dartmouth, Mass., this is one lean link.

I split a link and toss it on top of the veggies to heat it up. Looks something like this, but I'm having trouble with getting enough light in my new kitchen to get a decently exposed photograph (gotta work on that).

This is no Polish-style sausage. I've come across very few sausages this low-fat, and it doesn't even advertise itself as being lean.

One suggested serving size, 2 ounces, has 9 grams of fat and 1 gram of carbohydrate. "Suggested serving size," we know what that's good for. This package is three links at 16 ounces.

So, what I'm really eating, one link, is closer to 5 ounces and just over 18 grams fat.

It's dry, not greasy. But well-flavored, and paired with these veggies in this sauce -- I'm just saying it was a big improvement over the previous night!

I heated two corn tortillas (instead of the usual three or four I might have with dinner). Turns out, it was very filling.

One other thing. I called up Travis Poling -- shout out to an old buddy from San Antonio.  I was at Total Wine, and I needed advice on a good porter ale. Travis writes Beer Across Texas. He's our expert on all things beer, and told me his favorite porter is Meantime, an English brand I could not find at Total Wine.

Second option was Fuller's. That they had. And it really went great with this dish. If you like porters and you're looking for a healthier dinner offering, this should make for a satisfying evening meal.

More about Gaspar's. Manual A. Gaspar moved to the United States in 1912 armed with recipes for making traditional "linguica and chourico."

The Gaspar Sausage Company Inc. has become the largest manufacturer of Portuguese sausage in the country, producing well over three million pounds each year.

Readily available at all major supermarket chains throughout New England, Gaspar's Linguica and Chourico can also be found in parts of New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Bermuda.

Buen provecho!

Los Galleguitos: real Spanish by way of New Jersey

I'm open to suggestions on what to do with Florida avocados. 
But that's another topic - more later.

So, two Asturians and one Galician get together in New Jersey in the 1960s and start up Los Galleguitos, a line of Spanish recipe chorizos.  I picked up a package of their 'chorizo primera' at a Sedano's (latin grocery) in Hollywood, Fla.

FYI, the province of Asturia is in northermost Spain. It's on the Atlantic Ocean side and faces the Bay of Biscay.  Galicia isn't too far away, also on the Atlantic side. It has a border with northern Portugal.

To my taste, Palacios (a Spanish import) is still the one to beat. But this one is decent, and by that I'm not sure if I mean I'm beginning to acquire a taste for the Spanish style chorizos or this Los Galleguitos brand is better than average.  I'm leaning toward "better than average," but I am getting used to Spanish chorizos.

There's no mistaking the differences between Spanish style and Mexican style chorizos. Mexican is usually fresh processed and soft; you still have to cook it. Spanish is pre-cooked, hard like a pepperoni and the spice mix is different.

There's something tangy about Spanish-style that takes awhile to get used to. Some are too tangy. I don't know how to describe them more accurately.  They almost have a citrus quality, but I couldn't point to one and say, "Orange!"  In any case, the Palacios won me over because it's so smooth -- that recipe doesn't have so much tang/tart to it.

Maybe another way to describe this is to use wines as an analogy.  Generally speaking, wines with too much tannin are less desirable. That's why wine tasters aerate -- get the wine to "breath" -- before drinking.

Los Galleguitos has that tang, but it's not as strong as I've found in some other brands. In other words, I can work with it.

I'm going for a Cuban sense of order with this breakfast (they like to separate their food items, whereas, Mexicans are more inclined to heap a lot of items together).

Low heat: take your time.  Okay, TRY to take your time.  Maybe you should wait until Saturday? Let the chorizo (chopped) simmer on a grill.  Three or four minutes go by, you're slicing onion, red bell pepper, poblano (you may have noticed by now that I never use green bell pepper), and add that to the heat.

You did put vegetable oil on the grill first?

Parallel to this, on a second heat source, your comal is hot and the corn tortillas as getting a tan. Freckle that flat bread up!

Last on the grill -- but not last on the plate -- is one egg that we'll cook over easy.  Otherwise, it's going to make a mess and confound our "separate but equal" presentation.

I like my eggs over easy almost running, so I flip them pretty quick.  No, they don't break.  It takes practice.

Now, about them Florida avocados. I've been buying them lately because the Hass avocados are so much more expensive here.  I'm used to Hass, never used a Florida until I moved to South Florida.  But they're not as buttery and making guacamole with these things is a challenge.  I think it's because they have more water content and this dilutes the potency you find in a Hass.

I have noticed that the Florida avocados hold up better in the fridge, though. Cover an open one with cellophane and it will last longer than a Hass.

Well, if I come up with a better recipe, I'll share it.  In the meantime, we have guacamole on the side! Pretend it's great.

I sprinkle a hard, salty latin cheese (cotija or something similar) over the egg ... and dig in.

Buen provecho!

Palacios from Spain: OMG! This is so good.

I'm not often pleasantly surprised with sausages that I don't buy from Texas or Mexico, but I have to say this Palacios Chorizo Picante is 'oh my God' good.

I found a 7.9-ounce Palacios sausage at a Publix grocery in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I'd never seen it before and I was curious, so I tossed it in the cart and kept moving.

This is an import. It comes from La Rioja, Spain. That's a rural area to the far north that really isn't close to anything people here might have heard of except for maybe Pamplona. Yes? No?

The ingredients are about as simple as sausage ingredients get: pork, paprika, salt, garlic. It says it's all natural and has no preservatives; I guess salt as a preservative doesn't count in Spain?

Whatever. Did I mention I really liked this sausage? I mean really. This simple recipe is to perfection. Just the right amount of everything. I would totally buy this one again. It says it's "hot" but I didn't find that to be the case.

On the other hand, I paired it with a homemade guacamole that had some spicy poblano pepper as an ingredient, so that might have masked its heat. But I don't think so! Not that I'm holding that against it, obviously.

This meal! It turned out really well. I'd rank it in my Top 10 of all the meals I've blogged about to date. And it's so simple! Let's start with cooking a pot of brown rice. That will take 45 minutes to boil, so don't even bother starting the protein portion of your entree until you've had the rice cooking for about 30 minutes.

But here is what you can do in the meantime. Take a quarter section of a Florida avocado (those big light green ones), and a quarter section of an average size tomato, and about a third-cup's worth of fresh onion, a tablespoon-sized section of poblano pepper and a thin slice (less than quarter-inch thick) section of lime.

Put all this in a blender, except for the lime section; just squeeze the juice out of that into the blender. Add about four good shakes of salt, put the lid on and blend. Now put your guacamole in the fridge.

Here's the Incredible Trio: a two-inch length of Palacios sausage, one egg and two healthy looking scallions.

By the way, these proportions are a meal for one. Double the quantity if you're inviting company.

Heat a sauce pan. Put your section of sausage on a cutting board and dice it up fine (almost to pea size bits).

Now that your sauce pan is warming, pour in about a third-cup water and a slice pat of butter and then toss in the sausage and get it to diffuse its grease and reddish coloring (paprika) into the water-butter mix.

Quickly chop up the scallion. Just as the water boils, toss in the scallion and stir a bit. Do not let your fluids dry out, make sure that heat is medium.

You want just enough grease and moisture to crack in the egg, so it doesn't stick. Toss the yolk or don't, depending on your taste and health concerns. Stir until the egg is no longer watery.

I served the rice on the bottom from center to one edge, and layered the chorizo-egg-scallion over the rice.

Guacamole is on the side. I had mine with a porter beer, but I could see going with a red wine or sangria or just a fruit flavored water.

What do you think? Come on! You've gotta try it.

Buen provecho!

Fish & smoked sausage noodle soup

I can't say it enough, it doesn't take a big budget to make a big budget meal.

A can of sardines, a package of smoked sausage, some chopped onion and a packet of shrimp-flavor Ramen noodles and you're there.

Whoa! Did I say Ramen noodles? Okay, now I know (I know!) there are people out there that went through some lean times and were stuck eating Ramen noodles every day. I've heard about them. I've even heard it said some have sworn that once they started making a living wage they would never, ever, ever, ever ... EVER! eat Ramen noodles again.

Okay, so to you Ramen noodle haters -- hey, I felt that way about pizza for years -- I say to you, pick a different noodle. But my point is this is a low-budget meal.

So, calm down. Let's get started.

Open one can of sardines packed in olive oil; how painful was that to your wallet? Chop some onions, the quantity depends on whether you're cooking for one person or two, and whether either of you really likes onions, or not so much.

For the sausage, we're going to use Meyer's Elgin Smoked Sauage with Garlic. Why? Because I can, or could until I ate my supply of Meyer's. But any kielbassa style sausage with garlic will do.

Meyer's is called Meyer's Elgin because these sausage makers are from Elgin, Texas and Texans tend to identify Elgin with sausage. Their website is called 'cue-topia because they like to make cute with the word barbecue, as in the Utopia of BBQ, and not to be confused with Utopia, Texas, which is 177 miles southwest of Elgin and an entirely different story altogether.

Boil the Ramen noodles with the shrimp flavor seasoning and chopped onions. That takes, what, seven minutes? Now take your diced sausage bits (one or two links, depending on how fond you are of meat byproducts) and toss them in the soup, let that simmer for a couple of minutes to get the grease flowing.

The last item to go in is the sardines. You just want to heat the sardines, so turn the heat off and let the heat you already have simmering do all the work. This should take all of 60 seconds.

And serve!

Now don't that look great? It's righteously tasty, too.

Notice that I didn't even break up the sardine. It's about as whole as I could get it coming out of the can.

Oh, yes, and there's a salad involved. I made a big salad. It had romaine lettuce, tomato, chopped bits of dried fruit (apricot and plum), sesame seed, garlic croutons, olive oil and a twist of lime juice.

Buen provecho!

Kiolbassa expands Costco distribution

San Antonio-based sausage manufacturer Kiolbassa Provision Co. got into an additional 55 Costco stores in the upper Midwest by the end of July.

Kiolbassa previously sold its products in 17, Costco stores in Texas.

“This is three times as many Costco buildings as we are currently in, so it’s a huge opportunity for us,” said Michael Kiolbassa, president of the eponymously named company. “Our plant is capable of producing probably about 5 million pounds more than we’re producing, so there’s plenty of capacity to grow.”

The recent additions expand the company’s presence into the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky.

In May, it started distributing at 73 additional Sam’s Club stores in the upper Midwest and in the Southeast. It had been selling at 17 Sam’s stores before then.

Kiolbassa products are now available to about 1,255 stores. The company now distributes in 20 states.

Kiolbassa said the family-owned company has had an annual growth rate of about 17 percent for the past 20 years.

The company’s 25,000-square-foot Texas plant expects to produce 10.5 million pounds of sausage this year.