We do 2 kinds of chorizo. A spanish style with lots of smoked paprika,
garlic and other spices and a non-traditional Mexican chorizo with roasted
poblano chiles, mexican oregano and cumin, among other things...

We just did a spanish chorizo, fig and fresh parsley hash-type thing with seared Gunthrop Farm smokey paprika seasoned duck breast. The dish was created after tasting Field Recordings Fiction Red - and it was unanimously decided that the only thing that could ever be served with that wine would be duck, chorizo and figs. We also made a fig reduction sauce with a splash of Fiction Red. Heaven.

I like to make sauces with chorizo, mainly because of the intense flavor and the great color that it can lend to a sauce.  In the past, I've made a foam from chorizo for flavor but also because I only made so much dried chorizo and it was a great way to extend the use of the limited quantities.  When there is more chorizo around, I like to small dice it, render it and use the meat and the rendered fat in a chunky vinaigrette to accompany fish preparations.

We just hung some traditional Spanish chorizo. I know it's not exciting but it is damn tasty. Mostly I like to use it in bases for sauces and braises.

We're using chorizo in our deviled eggs. Lightly breaded hard boiled eggs, chorizo deviling with watermelon radish and green onion.

Our Spanish Chorizo is relatively traditional- Heirloom pork and plenty of
chilis, a few different kinds of paprika, garlic and we let it age for
several weeks. We love eating it with some mustard relish and toast.
We also make a traditional Mexican style Chorizo for a brunch Chilaquiles
special.
It also has Heirloom pork, plenty of chilis, paprikas, but no added fat so
it's leaner compared to the other. It's a fresh sausage so it's never
encased.
We also use this one for soups and stock bases.
Zeeshan Shah

South Louisiana Creoles have long had a fresh pork sausage called chaurice, which is a knockoff of chorizo that surely dates to the early Spanish occupation of Louisiana but reflects the strong Spanish influence in the Creole cookery to this day. We make it often, and have a few favorite things to do with it: Wood-grilled links with biscuits and gravy, pan-fried as a side to red beans and rice, as a seasoning for goat cheese pies, and cooked with tomatoes to make a ragout that is dynamite with fish. Maybe my favorite thing I've ever enjoyed made with chaurice is a "hot sausage" po' boy at Gene's, this totally ghetto po' boy and daiquiri chop on Elysian Fields in New Orleans, right in between Treme and the Marigny. They griddle two massive patties of the sausage, mashing them down into onions as they cook, then melt American cheese (Yes, that's right) all over them and put them on the standard Leidenheimer French roll dressed according to tradition - mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato. It's straight up blue collar junk food but if you ever have one while you're well lit, you'll know why I put it up there as a hidden treasure of New Orleans.

Chorizo is a Spanish word meaning sausage although we tend to think of it in two ways: fresh spicy Mexican sausage with lots of garlic and paprika or the dry-cured Spanish style that is harder and smoky tasting. So, chefs may use the word to really just indicate a sausage preparation. We make a smoked Spansh style to serve with clams and make the fresh Mexican style with pork trimmings for family meal.

At Vera we make three different kinds of chorizo;lamb,pork,and duck. We started making lamb chorizo out of frugality. We were buying lamb racks from Kieth Martin of Elysian Fields,and had so much scrap left after butchering that we knew we needed to find a use for all this wonderful lamb we had just sitting around. We made a chorizo with the scraps and some more lamb shoulder and served the chorizo in conjunction with the lamb rack. In the end the chorizo became so popular that we ditched the lamb rack and focus now solely on the chorizo. Our use of chorizo is mostly based on frugality, we do a lot of butchering in house and always have scrap of some kind laying around. It just makes sense also from a sustainability standpoint to use every single part of the animal you can.The seasoning is very similar for all three, pimenton,garlic,thyme,cumin, etc. Chorizo also fits in well with our concept, i.e. Spanish regional cuisine. In most of the dishes chorizo is more of a secondary flavor enhancer sort of thing with the exception of the lamb chorizo. The lamb chorizo is so popular and tastes so good on its own I don't know if I can ever take it off the menu. We are serving it now with whatever seasonal greens I can get, right now cabbage, but plan to change it up as the seasons change.

For our new restaurant, Allium, we have a bar snack called "Chorizo Cheese Chips" . Homemade potato chips with a creamy cheese sauce made from Mahon and Air Dried Chorizo crumbles, topped with smoked paprika.