Making my own Mexican chorizo

When I was young and silly, I found a recipe for mussels and chorizo. I loved chorizo—it was that tangy, spicy sausage I ate mixed with my scrambled eggs at my favorite Mexican breakfast joints.

The recipe called for slicing the chorizo, which I did. The chorizo was a little soft and squishy, but I managed to carve out a few pieces.

I threw it in the warm skillet. And almost immediately, the bright-red sausage squirmed free of its casing. Instead of round symmetrical slices of sausage, I had little bits and blobs of sausage. But I wasn’t that disappointed. It still tasted like chorizo should taste and I just thought that I’d bought a badly made batch of chorizo. (I was in Iowa, after all.)

I went back to the store and bought another package, this time checking the expiration date to make sure it wasn’t terribly old. Again, I took it home and tried slicing it. This time, it didn’t even wait until I added it to the skillet before slithering out of its case like a snake shedding its skin.
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