How to buy Portuguese sausages
If you have the chance to buy Portuguese sausages at the market, make sure they’re firm, not soft (with the exceptions of those noted below). Spongy links mean a lot of fillers, bloated ones mean waterlogged. True artisanal sausages are bumpy with dry skin—sometimes with a harmless white bloom on it—and a deep smoky aroma. If in doubt, ask the butcher.
It’s my experience that chouriço is the favored link in Portugal. Made from chunks of pork loin with a good amount of added fat—the proportions are always the secret of the maker—plus loads of paprika, garlic, red or white wine, and hot piri-piri sauce, chouriço is first air-dried and then heavily smoked.
Cooks serve them boiled, grilled, fried, or roasted. One of the showier presentations is firemen’s sausage, where a link of sausage is doused with aguardente, a powerful distilled spirit, and set ablaze. Amid a great whoosh of flame, and shrieks from the table, the sausage’s skin chars and blisters and the meat takes on a sweetness when dipped in the liquor.
Homestyle chouriço (.80 pound), $7.99 from Portugalia Marketplace
How to buy Portuguese sausages
If you have the chance to buy Portuguese sausages at the market, make sure they’re firm, not soft (with the exceptions of those noted below). Spongy links mean a lot of fillers, bloated ones mean waterlogged. True artisanal sausages are bumpy with dry skin—sometimes with a harmless white bloom on it—and a deep smoky aroma. If in doubt, ask the butcher.
It’s my experience that chouriço is the favored link in Portugal. Made from chunks of pork loin with a good amount of added fat—the proportions are always the secret of the maker—plus loads of paprika, garlic, red or white wine, and hot piri-piri sauce, chouriço is first air-dried and then heavily smoked.
Cooks serve them boiled, grilled, fried, or roasted. One of the showier presentations is firemen’s sausage, where a link of sausage is doused with aguardente, a powerful distilled spirit, and set ablaze. Amid a great whoosh of flame, and shrieks from the table, the sausage’s skin chars and blisters and the meat takes on a sweetness when dipped in the liquor.
Homestyle chouriço (.80 pound), $7.99 from Portugalia Marketplace
