If the image of working-class prosperity in the US was as soon as, as Herbert Hoover mentioned, a hen in each pot, then, unquestionably, in Portugal it’s a dry-cured smoked sausage in each pan.
So ubiquitous are sausages, in addition to hams, that till very just lately practically each nation family made its personal. My household nonetheless does. My Uncle Joe even constructed a smoker the scale of a minivan in the course of Somerville, Massachusetts, so my Aunts Irina, Exaltina, and Lourdes can collect a number of instances a yr to make our household’s really incomparable sausages.
Learn how to purchase Portuguese sausages
In case you have the prospect to purchase Portuguese sausages on the market, be certain that they’re agency, not comfortable (with the exceptions of these famous under). Spongy hyperlinks imply numerous fillers, bloated ones imply waterlogged. True artisanal sausages are bumpy with dry pores and skin—generally with a innocent white bloom on it—and a deep smoky aroma. If unsure, ask the butcher.
Chouriço (show-rhee-soo)
It’s my expertise that chouriço is the favored hyperlink in Portugal. Created from chunks of pork loin with quantity of added fats—the proportions are at all times the key of the maker—plus a great deal of paprika, garlic, purple or white wine, and scorching piri-piri sauce, chouriço is first air-dried after which closely smoked.
Cooks serve them boiled, grilled, fried, or roasted. One of many showier displays is firemen’s sausage, the place a hyperlink of sausage is doused with aguardente, a strong distilled spirit, and set ablaze. Amid an amazing whoosh of flame, and shrieks from the desk, the sausage’s pores and skin chars and blisters and the meat takes on a sweetness when dipped within the liquor.
Homestyle chouriço (.80 pound), $7.99 from Portugalia Market
Linguiça (leen-gwee-suh)
Some Portuguese could have conniptions after they learn this, however nonetheless, it’s true: there’s nearly no distinction between chouriço and linguiça. They’re constituted of the identical fundamental components in the identical precise method. Nonetheless, some Portuguese insist that linguiça is spicier, but I’ve had some chouriço so scorching it blisters your lips. Others keep that linguiça is extra finely floor or leaner than chouriço. Not essentially true.
After a decade of asking questions on two continents, I’ve come to the conclusion that any slight distinction tends to be the results of the producer versus nationally accepted categorization.
The one constant distinction is that linguiça is smaller in diameter as a result of it’s constituted of the small intestines of a pig, whereas chouriço is constituted of the massive. (Some producers use beef casings for chouriço, therefore the bigger dimension.) Oh, one different false impression: linguiça is just not constituted of tongue, although lingua is the Portuguese phrase for tongue.
Linguiça does a star flip in Porto’s arguably most well-known sandwich, the Francesinha. This “Little Frenchie,” boasts piles of sliced ham, linguiça, and roasted beef all smothered in melted cheese and naped with a spicy tomato-beer sauce. And it ain’t a Francesinha with out french fries on the aspect.
For each chouriço and linguiça, you’ll be able to substitute Spanish chorizo, however be certain that it’s the dry-cured model; Spain additionally makes a uncooked product. Be forewarned, although: Spanish hyperlinks will be a lot fattier than chouriço or linguiça, so drain or skim the fats throughout cooking. Relating to the pores and skin, you’ll be able to depart it on or take away it—your selection.
Linguiça (1 pound), $5.99 from Portugalia Market
Morcela (mord-sal-ah)
Sure, morcela, often known as blood sausage or blood pudding, is certainly made with…blood. Sometimes pig. Now, earlier than you begin having flashbacks of the film “Carrie,” folks actually do find it irresistible–my household is nuts for it. (I fortunately admit, I’m one of many solely holdouts.)
When my father was rising up on the island of São Miguel within the Azores, my grandfather raised a pig annually. The slaughter, or matança, which came about in early December, offered meals for all seven members of the Leite family for your complete yr. Nothing was wasted, and that included the blood.
The morcela Azoreans are most acquainted with accommodates no meat–simply pork fats, blood, onions, garlic, and spices and is, understandably, fairly wealthy.
However yow will discover morcela everywhere in the nation and in limitless variations. In some areas, sausage makers make it with cloves, cumin, nutmeg, and/or pepper. In different areas, yow will discover morcela de arroz, blood sausage studded with cooked rice. All through the Alentejo, a area within the south of Portugal, producers favor to treatment their morcela by boiling moderately than smoking. And if that weren’t sufficient, sure areas produce morcela with pork meat marinated in blood.
Morcela makes an look in feijoada (a stew of pork, sausages, and beans) and in cozido (a form of a Portuguese pot au feu–a boiled dinner of meat, sausages, and greens). Cooks additionally put together it fried, grilled, and sauteed and serve it with fries, rice, and eggs. Within the Azores, morcela usually shares a plate with recent pineapple–one in every of São Miguel’s most well-known crops.
Morcela (.75 pound), $5.99 from Portugalia Market
Alheira (al-yay-dah)
Alheira is uncommon among the many canon of Portuguese sausages. It’s one in every of solely two created for political causes. In 1497, King Manuel I of Portugal decreed all Jews within the nation needed to convert to Catholicism or face expulsion–to distant and unhospitable nations together with former Portuguese colonies on the western coast of Africa. Most of the Jews who remained and transformed, aptly referred to as conversos, confronted a dilemma. They needed to secretly keep their Judaic traditions and practices whereas outwardly wanting like good Christian troopers. One of many hardest traditions to maintain was eschewing pork in a rustic that unapologetically worships the pig.
Each house had a small fumeiro, or smokehouse, and eyebrows would increase if no pork sausages had been smoking. To flee discover and preserve kosher, these conversos cleverly seasoned different non-forbidden meats, equivalent to recreation and poultry, and bread with the identical wine and spice combos as chouriço and linguiça after which smoked them. Hostile neighbors, suspicious clergymen, and the authorities had been none the wiser.
These days, alheira is not kosher because it’s constituted of varied combos of pork, duck, hen, quail, hare, and rabbit. Sometimes served fried or grilled with blistered, charred pores and skin, alheira is beloved everywhere in the nation.
Two of Portugal’s most interesting alheiras get pleasure from protected standing, Indicação Geográfica Protegida (IGP), which means their high quality and repute are inextricably linked to the geographical space the place they’re produced: Alheira de Vinhais within the Bragança district, and Alheira de Barroso-Montalegre, within the Trás os Montes area.
Alheira (~ 1 pound), $7.99 from Portugalia Market
Farinheira (fa-reen-yay-dah)
Farinheira is the opposite Portuguese sausage born out of political necessity. Like with alheira, Jews who fled persecution in Spain created farinheira as a technique to keep away from detection in Northern Portugal.
Its identify derives from the Portuguese phrase “farinha,” which interprets to “flour,” its most important ingredient. Initially, bereft of any porky goodness, the filling these days consists of wheat flour blended with loads of pork fats, white wine, garlic, and paprika. As soon as stuffed into the casings, the entire thing is smoked. With out the meatiness of chouriço or linguiça, it has a sweeter, milder taste.
As a result of flour, farinheira is kind of comfortable, so it’s by no means sliced and cooked like its charcuterie cousins. Cooks normally add entire hyperlinks to brothy dishes equivalent to feijoada or cozido. In addition they take away it from its casings, break it up in a skillet, and sauté it. Then they unfold it on toasted bread as a petisco, or small chew. One very fashionable dish is ovos mexidos com farinheira–eggs scrambled with crumbled farinheira.
Farinheira (~0.66 pound), $6.99 from Portugalia Market
Salpicão and paio
Salpicão and paio are kissing cousins. Not like most different smoked Portuguese sausages which can be constituted of chunks of fatty pork shoulder, these two ready-to-eat hyperlinks are constituted of the loin. (Assume Canadian bacon however with a number of sass.)
Apart from pork loin, salpicão additionally accommodates wine, bay leaf, garlic, paprika, and salt. Paio, alternatively, accommodates vinegar or wine, garlic, salt, and paprika or massa de pimentão, a salty paste of candy purple peppers. The foremost distinction between them is paio tends to be bigger in diameter.
Within the Alentejo, you’ll additionally discover paio branco (white paio). It’s constituted of Alentejan pigs–they’re the fortunate ones who get to sup on cork oak acorns, which give the meat its distinctive, barely candy taste. These sausages don’t comprise paprika or massa de pimentão, so it’s lighter in shade, therefore the identify.
Salpicão (~1 pound), $8.99 from Portugalia Market
Presunto (preh-zoon-too)
Whereas not sausage, this dry-cured ham of Portugal deserves a spot right here, because it has few rivals. Its supremacy comes from permitting the pigs to gorge themselves for as much as sixty days on cork oak acorns (similar as for paio branco above) earlier than assembly their destiny, in addition to from the laborious technique of quick-salting, rinsing, long-term salting, and pure air drying. This leaves the sublimely silky meat a deep purple purple with excellent marbling, ringed by a layer of opalescent ivory fats.
The nation’s two most interesting areas for presunto manufacturing are the cities of Chaves and Lamego, within the Trás-os-Montes area within the north, which rubs its hams with a coating of candy paprika and olive oil earlier than smoking; and the Alentejo, within the south, which prefers to maintain its hams uncoated and unsmoked. For the Alentejan presunto, the hoof stays to show it comes from the well-known porco preto, or black pig.
Cooks serve presunto in skinny slices by itself, in sandwiches, and alongside recent fruit. In addition they use it in cooking so as to add depth of taste and a little bit of a salty chew. Add it to cheese platters, omelets, or salads, or minimize it into small cubes, fry, and sprinkle on baked potatoes.
How lengthy do Portuguese sausages final?
The firmer Portuguese sausages equivalent to chouriço, linguiça, salpicão, and paio can last as long as a number of months if saved in a cool and dry place. However mould will be a difficulty, so be aware. Softer sausages, equivalent to morcela, alheira, and farinheira, are greatest eaten inside every week of buy. All of them will be frozen as much as six months.
Don’t toss the oil you prepare dinner the sausages in!
After I was a child, my grandmother, VoVo Costa, and I spoke a mixture of cobbled-together Portuguese and English, which I referred to as Portglish. And each from time to time, she’d shout from her kitchen, “Barry, David, Wayne! Quer sheeps?” “Sheeps” was her manner of attempting to pronounce “chips,” aka fries.
My cousins and I by no means refused this uncommon deal with. At any time when she’d fry chouriço or linguiça, she’d pour the deeply orange oil right into a jar and retailer it within the fridge. When she’d saved sufficient, she’d peel some potatoes, minimize them into thick wedges, and fry them within the oil. The potatoes would come out orange and tasting of garlic and smoke.
At any time when I fry Portuguese sausage, I consider Vovo, standing on the range, her skinny reedy voice singing alongside to the soulful fado on the radio. And I consider these fries, and by some means the world rights itself for a second.
