Chorizo Criollo (Argentine Grilling Chorizo)

Chorizo criollo is the fresh sausage of the Argentine and Uruguayan asado: a coarse link of pork and some beef, seasoned with garlic, salt, pepper and a splash of red wine, grilled whole over wood coals and eaten hot. Split lengthwise into a “butterfly” and laid in a crusty roll under chimichurri, it becomes choripán, the stadium and street-cart sandwich of the Southern Cone. It shares a word with two other sausages and very little else. Spanish chorizo is cured, dried and red with pimentón; Mexican chorizo is a loose chile-and-vinegar grind cooked crumbled in a pan. The Argentine one is neither: it is never cured and never smoked, it carries at most a pinch of paprika for colour, and the smoke you taste comes off the coals, not out of the meat. The beef is the other tell — cattle country put it in the national sausage. In build and seasoning it sits much closer to a fresh Italian salsiccia than to anything Spanish, which fits a country that took in one of the largest Italian migrations anywhere. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from Marianski’s three South American chorizo formulas and the Argentine food code’s definition of a fresh chorizo, and it is untested.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight

• 1,589 g / 3 lb 8 oz boneless pork shoulder (Boston butt), about 25% fat as trimmed (70%)
• 681 g / 1 lb 8 oz beef chuck, sinew removed (30%)

SEASONING (% of meat weight)

• 41 g / 1.4 oz fine salt (1.8%)
• 5.7 g black pepper, medium grind (0.25%)
• 18 g garlic, crushed to a paste (5–6 cloves) (0.8%)
• 4.5 g dried oregano, rubbed (0.2%)
• 1.1 g nutmeg, fresh grated (0.05%)
• 6.8 g sweet paprika (not smoked), optional, for colour only (0.3%)
• 114 g / 4.0 oz dry red wine (Malbec is the obvious choice), cold — about 110 ml / 3.8 fl oz (5%)
• 32–36 mm natural hog casing, about 12 ft / 3.7 m, linked at 6 in / 15 cm

TO SERVE AS CHORIPÁN

• 1 crusty French-style roll per link (pan francés or a short baguette)
• 1 batch chimichurri, made the day before

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper

1. In the collection: Black Pepper and garlic carry the seasoning, so use fresh garlic and grind the pepper. Make the Chimichurri a day ahead — it is half of a choripán. The nearest relatives already in the collection are Sweet Italian Sausage and Hot Italian Sausage, which is the point of this page.
2. Chill and cube: cut the pork and beef into 1-in / 2.5 cm cubes, keep them separate, and chill to 30–32 °F / −1–0 °C until the edges are stiff. Warm fat smears instead of cutting, and smeared fat renders straight out on the grill and leaves a dry, crumbly link.
3. Grind the two meats differently: pork once through an 8 mm (5/16 in) plate, beef through a 6 mm (1/4 in) plate. Beef is leaner and chewier; the smaller plate keeps it from reading as gristle in a coarse sausage. Coarse is correct — this is a grilling sausage, not a frank.
4. Mix with the wine: stir the salt, garlic and spices into the cold wine, pour it over the meat and mix by hand or in the mixer for 1–2 minutes, until the mass turns tacky and holds together when squeezed. The wine is what Marianski singles out as the South American signature; it keeps the link moist over high heat.
5. Taste — the decision point: fry a small patty. It should taste of garlic, pork, pepper and a faint winey depth, and nothing should be hot. If it reads like Mexican chorizo you have over-done the paprika; if it reads like a bratwurst it wants more garlic and pepper. Adjust now.
6. Rest overnight: cover the mix and refrigerate it overnight (Marianski’s step). The salt and garlic spread through the meat and the stuffed link holds together better.
7. Stuff and link: stuff firmly into the hog casing without air pockets and twist or tie into 6 in / 15 cm links. Prick any air bubbles. Refrigerate uncovered on a rack a few hours so the casing dries; a dry casing browns, a wet one steams. Fresh sausage: cook within 2 days or freeze.
8. Grill over coals: build a hardwood or hardwood-charcoal fire and let it burn down to embers you can hold a hand over for 5–6 seconds. Grill the links whole, turning, 20–25 minutes, to 160 °F / 71 °C inside. Do not prick them on the grill — the fat is the juice. This is where the smoke comes from; pan-fried, this sausage tastes noticeably plainer.
9. Choripán: split each cooked link lengthwise almost through and open it flat (a la mariposa), give the cut face a minute on the grate, lay it in a split, lightly toasted roll and spoon over chimichurri. Eat it at the grill.
10. Sibling recipes: the blood sausage that goes on the same grill is Morcilla Parrillera (Argentine Grilling Blood Sausage); the Chilean cousin is Longaniza de Chillán (Chilean Smoked Sausage).

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The backbone is Marianski’s “Chorizo Criollo Argentino” (70% beef, 30% semi-fat pork, 1.8% salt, garlic, oregano, nutmeg, red wine) checked against his “Chorizo Argentinian” (25% beef, 50% lean pork, 25% fat, 1% paprika, 12% red wine) and his Uruguayan “Chorizo Parillero” (all pork, 30% fat, 0.4% paprika, cumin). The three disagree on beef from 0% to 70%, so this lands at 30%, where the dive’s hedged “about a third” sits. Deviations: (1) beef 30%, not 70% — the higher figure makes a lean, firm link that reads more like a beef sausage than a chorizo; (2) wine cut to 5% because 12% makes a wet mix that is hard to stuff; (3) Marianski’s chili powder (Criollo Argentino) and fennel seed are dropped — neither appears in the other two formulas, and fennel pushes it all the way into Italian sausage; (4) paprika reduced to an optional 0.3%. Untested.

What the law says. Argentina’s Código Alimentario defines chorizos frescos as a fresh sausage “elaborado sobre la base de carne de cerdo, de vacuno, de ovino o mezcla de ellas, con la adición de tocino”, and a fresh sausage as one not subjected to heat treatment, drying or smoking. There is no separate legal “chorizo criollo”; criollo here means home-grown, of the country. The code permits sheep meat too, which no published home formula uses.

Where chorizo criollo came from. The word and the pig came with Spain; neither existed in the Americas before 1492. The sausage itself has no documented founding year — it is described everywhere as long-settled custom, and any precise year offered for it is invented. Its shape is explained by what it is for: the asado, cooked over wood embers for hours, opens with chorizos and morcilla as the entrada while the beef cooks. That running order is custom, not rule. Choripán (chorizo + pan) is the same sausage taken off the grill and put in bread.

Three chorizos, one word. Spanish chorizo: cured, dried, pimentón-red, sliced cold. Mexican chorizo: fresh, chile-and-vinegar, crumbled into a pan. Argentine chorizo: fresh, coarse, pork-and-beef, grilled whole. “The fresh version of Spanish chorizo” misdescribes both — the Spanish one is the cured one, and this one has beef in it. The paprika point needs care: the dive says “no pimentón”, and two of Marianski’s formulas carry 0.4–1% paprika. What is absent is the Spanish dose and the smoked La Vera pimentón; a little sweet paprika for colour is within the tradition.

Variations. Uruguay’s chorizo parrillero is often all pork, with cumin and oregano. Butchers sell chorizo puro cerdo (all pork) beside pork-and-beef. Some add a little crushed red pepper or a pinch of clove. A thinner, longer link of the same mix is sold as longaniza parrillera. Bondiola sandwiches and morcipán (morcilla in bread) are the neighbours on the same grill.

Sourcing and gear. Plain hog casing; a 6 mm and an 8 mm plate; a hardwood fire. Argentine butchers in US cities sell chorizos, and they are worth buying once to calibrate against. Chimichurri for choripán is the raw parsley-garlic-oregano-vinegar version; Chimichurri and Green Chimichurri in the collection both fit.

Still open. No published Argentine butcher’s formula with weights has been compared against this one. Whether the Italian influence on the sausage can be documented, rather than inferred from its resemblance to salsiccia, is unanswered.

The photo. The photograph is a choripán — chorizo criollo split in bread with chimichurri, the way most of it is eaten.

Read more on the site. South America · A Grand Tour