chorizo | Jenna's Everything Blog

I don’t often make salads. When I do, the leftover ingredients usually go bad in this household of two. Then the guilt eats away at me. Then I vow never to let that happen again. So I steer clear from salads–it’s not that I don’t enjoy eating them, but who wants to be caught in a vicious cycle of wilty greens and guilt?

This salad, however, sunk me as soon as I saw its good-looking’ mug shot on Tasty Kitchen. And since it’s a warm salad, it can count as a main dish for a meal, and thus get consumed faster, before it goes bad and adds itself to my Register of Remorse. It satisfies the typical American man (meat, potatoes) and woman (leafy greens) so that everyone can be happy. It’s so good that we ate it two nights in a row, and then went and made it a third time the next night with a different kind of sausage.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

1.5 lbs new potatoes or red potatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
15 oz chorizo sausage
1 TBS olive oil
16 oz mixed salad greens
1 lemon
4 poached or fried eggs (1 per person, optional)

Here are the ingredients:

And the eggs are optional, but they come highly recommended. By me.

Wash the potatoes and chop them into bite-sized cubes.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil . . .

. . . and add the potatoes.

Cook them for 10-15 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork (but not falling apart!).

In the meantime, chop the sausage into small chunks.

I’ve never dealt with Mexcan chorizo before, and this step was messier than what I bargained for–next time I’ll just put the whole thing in the pan and break it apart as it cooks. The original recipe used Spanish chorizo, which is cured and hard (so it will retain its shape). My grocery store, however, only had this:

It’s delicious, but a completely different animal, and crumbles apart as you cook it. It’s up to you (and the availability of these products) to decide which kind you get.

Heat the olive oil in a cast iron skillet or other large pan over medium heat. When it’s hot, add the sausage . . .

. . . and cook for about 10 minutes, until it’s getting brown and starting to release oil of its own. This was the moment when my fantasy of having the sausage cook in chunks was decimated. Overturned. Debunked.

Oh well. Ground meat it is.

Once the potatoes are cooked, add them to the pan with the sausage and cook it all together for about 10-12 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add a good amount of salt and pepper to taste.

If you’re adding some eggs, this is the time to try or poach them. Sorry, no pictures of this part–just one shot of a lonely egg that was quickly poached in my leftover potato-boiling water.