Spanish sausages include spicy chorizo, longaniza, botillo, salchichon, and morcilla. Chorizo is made with pork fat, lean pork, pimenton, and garlic, while longaniza uses black pepper instead of pimenton. Botifarra includes various ingredients like eggs, honey, blood, and truffles, while botillo is made from different cuts of pork and smoked. Salchichon contains black pepper, cinnamon, and cloves, and morcilla can have various fillings like rice or onions. Most sausages are air-dried before consumption.
There are a number of traditional Spanish sausages, with some having worldwide notoriety. One of the best known is spicy chorizo, which also has a Mexican counterpart that isn’t seasoned. Many, but not all, are cured by air drying before they are ready to eat. Some cured sausages include longaniza, which is similar to chorizo, except it doesn’t use pimenton, botillo, and sobrassada. A sausage that does not contain meat as the main ingredient is called morcilla and instead uses fillings such as rice or onions, although it may still contain elements such as pork fat or blood.
The Spanish sausages known as chorizo are well known outside Spain and are emblematic of some of the basic techniques used in making Spanish sausage. Chorizo is a blend of pork fat, lean pork, pimenton and garlic. Pimenton — essentially a type of smoked paprika that can be sweet, bittersweet, or spicy — gives meat a red color, provides some sweetness or spiciness, and is a heavily used ingredient in Spanish sausages. Chorizo is also air-dried, as are more traditional sausages in Spain; very few use hot cooking or smoking for preservation. Longaniza is a type of sausage made in the same way as chorizo, except the pimenton is replaced by black pepper.
Spanish Botifarra sausages come from the Catalan regions of the country. Sausages are made from pork, accompanied by different ingredients when stuffed into the casing. Ingredients can include eggs, honey, blood, truffles, rice and tripe. Some botifarra are grilled, while others are not cooked at all before being eaten.
Botillo is made from a collection of different cuts of pork that cannot be used as prime cuts, sometimes including the tongue or other parts of the pig. The meat is spiced, placed in pig intestines and then smoked for a few days. After the smoking is complete, the sausages are air dried.
Spanish Salchichon sausages most closely resemble luncheon meat. The long thin sausage contains black pepper, cinnamon and cloves for flavoring. The sausage can be sliced thin and eaten on bread or crackers, and is sometimes served as part of a tapas dish.
One of the more unique Spanish sausages is known as morcilla. Morcilla can have many ingredients, but usually contains a fair amount of pork fat, sometimes blood, and a myriad of spices. Most of the filling can be rice, cereal, mashed potatoes or even onions. The sausages take on a very dark color and are usually stuffed with beef or pork casings. While morcilla is often dried, it can also be cooked without drying the links first.
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