The Traditional Portuguese Ingredient That Brings Smoky Flavor To Autumn Stews
When cooler days and longer nights have you yearning for a comforting bowl of stew or soup to warm both your soul and belly, we have a suggestion for a protein upgrade that will rock your bowl. Unless you live in the South Coast region of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the center of America's Portuguese diaspora, you may not know about chouriço, an iconic Portuguese sausage. Despite the similarities in name and proximity of origin to chorizo — both are products of the Iberian Peninsula — chouriço is not the same. Spanish chorizo is drier than chouriço and typically stuffed with smoked paprika. You might find chouriço more versatile than chorizo, in fact. Consider it just one more Portuguese dish that you need to try.
Because its flavor is more neutral than some other sausages, chouriço is incredibly versatile and incredibly worthy of inclusion in your hearty, warming autumn stews. A standard Portuguese stew stars chouriço along with potatoes, aromatics, and canned green beans for an effortless weeknight repast, but don't discount transforming your favorite beef stew recipe the Portuguese way with the addition of this sausage. We've discussed how Italian wine can upgrade beef stew; the Portuguese do it with a rich red and a towering basket of "pops," or bread rolls (papo secos), alongside the steaming Dutch oven. For a greener spin, try your hand at caldo verde, the Portuguese national soup, which packs in kale, big chunks of potato, and meaty chunks of chouriço in a flavorful broth. Anywhere you'd use sausage in your fall stews, you can feel pretty good about swapping chouriço, which is an ingredient that plays nice with many other savory components.
Chouriço is easy to work with, but may be difficult to source
If you live in coastal Massachusetts or Rhode Island, you'll have no issue plucking chouriço off the shelf at your local supermarket. For the rest of the country, the availability of this sausage in mainstream grocers can be hit-or-miss. We suggest tracking down the closest Portuguese restaurant or market in your community — many mid-sized metros or larger will have at least one — and seeing what they have in the way of cured meat. Barring that, Gaspar's, which many South Coast foodies consider to be "the" definitive chouriço brand, ships its products. You'll notice that you can choose the spice level of your sausage and can even source turkey chouriço if that's more your speed.
Once you've unlocked the world of flavor to be had when cooking with chouriço, we predict that you'll want to have a stock on hand for all your cozy autumn stews and soups. The best sausage cooking tips will always get you right when it comes to preparation, but some imagination is definitely helpful when it comes to finding the most delicious uses for your haul. For example, one iconic use of chouriço around Fall River, the nexus of the South Coast, is in a quahog "stuffie" — a large bivalve native to this particular part of New England that is stuffed in its shell with a breaded filling featuring sausage, aromatics, and copious amounts of butter. When we head into the fall clam season, how about a chowder augmented with spicy sausage? With chouriço in your arsenal, you're in for a wonderful season of heartier, tastier stews.