Beef Chorizo Recipe

All beef chorizo is a tasty and easily made substitute for the more common pork Chorizo.

As a matter of fact, the Mexican people I know use whatever meat happens to be most abundant at the time. I've had some great chorizo sausage that was made with venison, and even some that had a lot of rabbit meat in it!

You can easily increase the heat factor in your homemade chorizo by adding a little more red pepper (flakes or ground) to the spice mixture.

This particular recipe tends to be a bit on the mild side for the more tender souls in my family. You may think different, so it's a good idea to cook a little up before you call it finished and/or stuff it.

As with much of the all beef sausage I make at home, I usually produce my beef chorizo with 85% lean ground beef that I buy on sale.

There's no reason you can't grind your own, but I find that it is almost always less expensive to buy hamburger in bulk when it is on sale as a loss-leader.

Recipe

5 lbs ground beef, around 85% lean

3-4 cloves of minced garlic or 1 tablespoon garlic powder

3 tablespoons commercial chili powder

2 tablespoons paprika

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon dried Mexican oregano

2 teaspoons dried red pepper flakes

1/2 cup cider or red wine vinegar, mixed with 1/2 cup ice water

Put your ground beef into a large mixing bowl. If you are grinding your own meat, use the medium plate on your meat grinder.
Combine the spices in a 1 quart container and mix with the vinegar and ice water combination.
Pour the liquid and spice combination into the ground beef and mix thoroughly for at least 2 minutes. Use your hands for mixing to assure even distribution.
Once the sausage is fully mixed, either stuff it into casings or make it into patties or bulk packages.

I generally make this as a fresh bulk sausage, but on occasion I will stuff it into 35mm casings and smoke it.

Obviously, if you are intending to smoke your sausage, you will need to add 1 level teaspoon of either Instacure or Prague powder #1 for each 5 lbs of meat.