While you may serve chorizo in red wine with bread, I opted to serve it as a finger food. Spanish tapa style.
What chorizo works best for this dish?
Chorizo is Spanish for sausage; will non-Spanish sausages work too? Sure, but the sausages have to be really flavorful. Spicy ones work very well. The kind packed with paprika works even better.
Chorizo is either dried and ready to eat or not. You want the not-dried kind for this recipe—the kind you’d pick from the frozen section of the grocery.
And what kind of red wine should be used?
Dry? Sweet? Semi-sweet? That depends on the flavor of the sausages. Sweet wine with sweet sausages will make the dish too cloying. What you want is to find a balance between the flavors of the sausages and the wine.
As a rough guide, use dry wine with sweet sausages; semi-sweet or sweet wine with spicy and salty sausages.
Chorizo in red wine
Ingredients
- 250 to 300 grams fresh chorizo - I used smoked semi-sweet Spanish chorizo
- 1 ½ cups red wine - I used dry
- 1 sweet yellow onion
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- chopped parsley - to garnish
Instructions
- Using a small pointed knife, prick the chorizo skin in several places.
- Place the chorizo in a small sauce pan.
- Pour in the wine. Bring to the boil.
- Lower the heat and simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes, turning the chorizos occasionally, until the meat is cooked through.
- Cover the pan and allow the chorizo to steep in the wine for three to four hours.
- Peel and finely chop the onion.
- Take the chorizo out of the red wine.
- Cut into rings about half an inch thick.
- Heat the olive oil in a small frying pan.
- Saute the chopped onion until soft and translucent.
- Add the sliced chorizo to the onion. Keep the slices in a single layer.
- Pour in the wine. Cook over medium heat, uncovered, turning the chorizo slices over halfway through the cooking, until the liquid has almost dried up.
- Arrange the chorizo slices on a plate.
- Spoon the onion bits and any pan juices over them.
- Sprinkle with parsley.
