On chorizo salt......

     This is one of those techniques that was conceived out of pure necessity. I was given the task of making "chorizo salt" for a dish that we would be serving at one of our outlets. Having never made chorizo salt before I started assembling ideas in my head, the most practical of which was to mix kosher salt with rendered chorizo. I decided to go along with my original plan but I wasn't satisfied with the final product. The chorizo itself is a bit salty and then adding more salt on top of that didn't really give me the desired effect that I was looking for. I thought to myself, with the chorizo being as salty as it is, what if we can make the "chorizo salt" without the salt? I decided to move forward with this method, so I took the chorizo and pulsed it in the robot coupe for about 2 minutes to get a very fine grind. I took the ground chorizo and rendered it on low heat to extract all the fat. Once rendered completely I strained the excess fat and placed the chorizo over kitchen towels to absorb the rest of the oil. The outcome was a lot better than my first try but it didn't really resemble salt, it seemed more like bacon bits except it was chorizo bits. The flavor was there but the texture and mouth feel was off. I decided to pulse more chorizo in the robot coupe but this time instead of cooking it in a pan I placed it in a hotel pan over kitchen towels and cooked it at 200F for about two hours. The results were surprisingly well, flavor was spot on and consistency was similar to that of kosher salt except a little lumpier. I placed the chorizo back in the robot coupe, pulsed it for about 2 minutes to break down the lumps and then I passed it through a tamis. The final product was granular like kosher salt and the flavor was of concentrated chorizo. I decided to enhance the "Chorizo Salt" by adding paprika, brown sugar, and chili powder. The applications for the salt are endless, by far my favorite one is using it instead of salt to season steamed white fish. Here are some pictures of the "chorizo salt".