6 ways to get the most out of chorizo in your cooking

If you’ve been throwing away the rendered oil you fry chorizo in, you’re missing a trick – it’s an incredible thing to have in your fridge for future dishes. Use it to create intense dressings for salads, fry chicken, eggs or fish in it for extra flavour, stir it through potatoes or lentils; it’s a wonderfully versatile ingredient which instantly adds bags of taste. If it’s quite thick, then simply whisk it into a little vegetable or olive oil to loosen. You can also just cover already fried chorizo in a neutral oil and leave in the fridge for twenty-four hours to infuse.

If you’re truly dedicated to the cause, then you can make a chef-quality chorizo oil from scratch. Take a leaf out of Alyn Williams’ book and simply add vegetable oil, finely diced chorizo and a little water to a saucepan. Bring it to the boil and cook until the water has evaporated; this way the chorizo has plenty of time to infuse the vegetable oil with its flavours before crisping up and burning. The resulting oil will remain liquid and be less rich – but still contains all that incredible chorizo flavour.

The basic foundations of mayonnaise – egg yolks, vinegar and salt whisked together with oil until emulsified – provides the ultimate vehicle for added flavourings. Garlic, lemon, black pepper or herbs often find their way into homemade mayonnaises, but a touch of chorizo’s magic oil will instantly transform this condiment into something knockout. By emulsifying the egg yolks with a chorizo oil made using one of the methods above, you’ll be rewarded with a light orange mayo that’ll steal the show in sandwiches.

It might sound strange, but anyone who has had bacon jam before knows how well salty pork contrasts with the sweetness of sugar. And with chorizo’s added ingredients of garlic and paprika, the resulting jam is an explosion of flavour. There are two ways of making it – finely diced chorizo can be fried until crisp and then candied in brown sugar, or you can do as chef Robert Thompson does, making a smoother mayonnaise-like emulsion but with glucose syrup for added sweetness.

Chorizo often gets stirred into thick tomato sauces, but it’s equally good at flavouring looser, lighter sauces and stocks too. By simmering finely diced fried chorizo in cider and chicken stock, chef Kuba Winkowski creates an incredible broth which he uses to finish off his beautiful pasta dish. If making homemade chicken stock at home, adding a little chorizo into the mix while it simmers and bubbles away will make it ideal for cooking Spanish dishes, too.

Cooking chorizo with other ingredients that can absorb and suck up flavours is a no-brainer and makes good use of the rendered oils. Whenever you’re cooking a dish that contains chorizo and onions, for example, always gently cook the chorizo before adding the onions, so there is plenty of rich red oil for the onions to soak up and cook in. This idea can also be extended to the likes of bread – Marcus Wareing blitzes together chorizo, bread and almonds to create a paste, before using it to cover pieces of meaty monkfish. As the monkfish cooks in the pan, the chorizo paste turns from soft to crisp, whilst also protecting the fish from the harsher direct heat. It’s a clever little trick that can be used in all sorts of dishes – try just frying the chorizo and breadcrumb mixture on its own to create a crumble that can be scattered over salads before serving.