Spicy stuffing with chorizo recipe

Spicy stuffing with chorizo recipe

Yield: Enough to stuff a large chicken or to make about 12 golf-ball-sized balls

Ingredients:
150g bread – stuff that’s a few days old works best
50g cooking chorizo sausage
1 medium onion
1 pepper – I used green, red would be nicer
1 cloves of garlic
1 large egg, beaten
A little water (or chicken/veg stock, if you’ve got some on – only need a few tbsp worth)

Spices:
2tsp cumin seeds
1tsp mixed herbs
Chillis – I used three little fresh ones from the last of our summer harvest; normally I’d use dried chilli flakes, probably a large pinch of them.
Salt & pepper to season

1. Chop the bread into cubes then using a blender/mincer, grind into coarse breadcrumbs and place in a decent size mixing bowl.

2. Half the onion & pepper. Mince one half of them with the garlic and, if you’re using fresh chillis, the fresh chillis. Finely chop the other halves – these will provide texture & bursts of flavour while the former provide moisture and a more uniform flavour throughout. Add all to the mixing bowl.

3. Add the herbs & spices to the mixing bowl.

4. Finely chop the chorizo and add that too.

5. And the egg! Then mix it all together. A wooden spoon should suffice for this – anything electrical would be overkill. Add the water or stock a little at a time until it’s a cohesive mixture but not too sticky. To be all Goldilocks about it, it shouldn’t be too wet – but equally not too dry. Try shaping it into a ball with your hands – if it sticks together without crumbling or gloopily sticking to your hands, then it’s about right.

6. Stuff it in the bird in your favourite stuffing manner such as under the breast/breast skin or in the body cavity. Don’t pack it too tight as it does expand a bit while cooking.

Alternately, they can be cooked on a greased baking tray – brush them with olive oil so they brown nicely then cook them alongside your chicken in the oven. My chicken was in at 190C/gas mark 5 and they took about 15 minutes.

(If the meal looks a bit dry, please reassured that it wasn’t. The following day we made a sweet, spicy gravy for use with the leftover chicken but it was too much of a bodge to mention it here – I’ll figure out a better recipe for it then post it because yum!)

Alternatives: Since chorizo is pork, it would probably work just as well to stuff a pork loin/roast. Or to stuff a chicken breast before wrapping it in pancetta/bacon.