How to cook chorizo with eggs is not an art, nor are there any great secrets to cooking chorizo with eggs. But to ensure chorizo eggs success, there are important things to know about cooking with chorizo, starting with the differences between soft chorizo and hard chorizo, and what kind of chorizo is best with what eggs.
If you’re looking for secrets to cooking chorizo and eggs then you’ve come to the right place as we are absolutely terrible at keeping secrets, which is why we’ve compiled our best tips on how to cook chorizo with eggs for you, as well as explain the differences between the main types of chorizo, and what type of chorizo to use for what kind of eggs.
As we said in the intro to our compilation of best recipes with chorizo sausage – our long love of chorizo is no secret, as that collection of chorizo recipes demonstrates. Many of our best chorizo recipes are eggs recipes with chorizo, and include everything from fried eggs with chorizo and chilli oil to Mexican scrambled eggs with chorizo, and a caramelised onion and chorizo frittata.
We’ve been cooking with chorizo since our first trip to Mexico in the early Nineties when we fell in love with spicy Mexican eggs dishes, many of which incorporate the soft crumbly chorizo sausage, such as huevos revueltos con chorizo or scrambled eggs with chorizo.
That 1990s Mexico trip, which took us around half the country on a six-week culinary cum archaeological adventure, really opened our eyes to the possibilities of breakfast eggs and we’ve been cooking Mexican eggs dishes and getting creative with eggs ever since.
Terence is the master of cooking breakfast eggs and has loads of recipes for breakfast eggs with chorizo in our Weekend Eggs series on quintessential breakfast eggs dishes around the world, which we launched back in 2010 when we launched Grantourismo with our yearlong global grand tour.
If you are breakfast eggs lovers like us, you also might wish to browse our round-ups of our 21 best breakfast recipes of 2021, our best Christmas breakfast recipes which could be made year-round for holiday breakfasts and special occasions, and our all-time 12 most popular Weekend Eggs recipes in 12 years of Grantourismo, as part of Grantourismo’s 12th birthday celebrations.
Now before we share our tips on how to cook chorizo with eggs and what kind of chorizo to cook with, we have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-funded. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes or other content on the site, please consider supporting Grantourismo. You could buy us a coffee and we’ll use that donation to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing or contribute to our epic original Cambodian cuisine history and cookbook on Patreon.
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How to Cook Chorizo with Eggs – Tips on Cooking Chorizo and Eggs Plus Recipes
Our guide to how to cook chorizo with eggs, from the main types of chorizo and tips to cooking chorizo with eggs and links to recipes.
The Main Types of Chorizo – From Mexican Style Soft Fresh Chorizo to Spanish Style Hard Cured Chorizo
When it comes to how to cook chorizo in eggs, the first thing to understand are the different types of chorizo and how each type of chorizo should be prepared and cooked, and what type of chorizo is best for what type of eggs.
These days you’ll find a wide range of fresh, semi-cured and cured chorizo sausages, but you’ll often hear people talk about two main types of chorizo used in cooking with reference to their geographically origin, and they’re Spanish style chorizo and Mexican style chorizo, no matter where they come from.
Even where we live, in Cambodia, we can’t source Mexican chorizo, but we can find one soft crumbly Mexican style fresh chorizo, which, if you read the fine print is actually made in France, while there are a handful of harder cured and semi-cured Spanish style chorizo sausages made in Spain and France.
Our recipes with chorizo use both Spanish chorizo and Mexican chorizo. The first thing you need to know is that Mexican style chorizo is very different to Spanish style chorizo.
Mexican chorizo is nearly always a softer sausage that is fresh, so it must be cooked. It is meant to be taken out of the sausage casing and crumbled up a little bit before it is cooked.
There is also a softer semi-cured cooking chorizo which looks firm, like a sausage ready to be sliced and eaten, yet it still needs to be cooked. It stays relatively soft while releasing all that fatty paprika oil that we love to cook with. The soft semi-cured chorizo sausage is typically smaller in diameter as well, usually less than one inch or 2.5cm wide.
Spanish style chorizo – whether made in Spain or France – can be hard or soft, cured or semi-cured, although most Spanish style chorizos are on the harder style. The hard fully cured chorizo is ready to eat and quite firm to the touch. It is generally eaten like salami, in thin or thick slices, and can be eaten as tapas (a great companion to manchego cheese), as is or cooked. When over-cooked, it can go very hard, even unpleasantly so, and must be treated with care.
That’s why it’s important to understand the different types of chorizo and know what you’re buying and how to cook the chorizo you’ve bought.
Here’s how to cook chorizo with eggs, with links to relevant recipes.
Tips on Cooking Chorizo with Eggs and Chorizo and Eggs Recipes
Cooking Chorizo with Scrambled Eggs
How to cook chorizo with scrambled eggs and what kind of chorizo to use in scrambled eggs are two of the most-asked questions when it comes to cooking chorizo with eggs. It’s best to use Mexican style soft chorizo for scrambled eggs dishes, such as huevos con chorizo, the first Mexican breakfast eggs recipe we published way back at the start of 2010 soon after we launched Grantourismo.
When it comes to Mexican chorizo, you must always cook the chorizo first so that any other ingredients can take on the flavour of the chorizo from the spicy chorizo oil left in the pan. We like light and fluffy eggs for this dish, made with butter and just cooked through, however, with the classic Mexican huevos revueltos con chorizo recipe the eggs are usually cooked in a very rustic style over high heat.
Authentic Huevos Revueltos con Chorizo Recipe Based on Our Mexico City Favourite
Cooking Chorizo in an Omelette
How to cook chorizo in an omelette depends on the kind of omelette you are cooking. You could use either soft Mexican-style chorizo or hard Spanish-style chorizo in an omelette depending on what kind of texture you want.
For instance, for a perfectly-formed round French-style omelette, soft Mexican-style chorizo removed from its casing and crumbled would be best. But if you’re making a more rustic rough-around-the-edges omelette, diced hard Spanish-style cured chorizo is fine to use, un-cooked or just-cooked.
If you’re making a Spanish potato omelette with chorizo (tortilla de patatas con chorizo), firm chorizo is fine, but always cook the chorizo a little to release some oil which in turn flavours the thin potato slices that are cooked before the omelette is assembled.
Best Spanish Potato Omelette Recipe with Chorizo for Tortilla de Patatas con Chorizo
Cooking Chorizo with Fried Eggs
Again, how to cook chorizo with eggs that you’re going to be frying, depends on the style of fried eggs you are opting for: perfect round sunny side up eggs, rustic ‘messy eggs’ or crispy fried eggs.
Some of our favourite chorizo with fried eggs recipes are breakfast tacos – fried eggs on a warm soft tortilla (you can also use scrambled eggs). For these we like to sprinkle diced pieces of chorizo on and around the fried eggs so the harder style of cured Spanish style is best, just lightly fried.
For this Basque style ‘messy eggs’ dish, we user the harder Spanish-style chorizo. We like to cook off the chorizo with some olive oil so that when the potatoes are put in the pan they get crispy edges flavoured with the chorizo oil.
Likewise, with these eggs cooked in the chorizo oil, where you want crispy edges on the egg whites but still keep a soft yolk, so you have lots of texture in the final dish.
Fried Eggs with Chorizo and Potatoes Recipe for Basque Style ‘Messy Eggs’
Chorizo with Baked Eggs
When cooking chorizo with eggs that you’re going to be baking, you would probably want to opt for soft Mexican-style chorizo for something like oeufs en cocotte, which is a French eggs dish of eggs cooked in individual ramekins.
The classic American country skillet breakfast is better with chorizo than with bacon in our opinion and soft Mexican chorizo is best for this dish, too, because by the time the cheese is melted under the grill, the hard style chorizo will be way too firm and chewy.
Eggs Potatoes and Chorizo Breakfast Skillet Recipe for a Twist on a Classic American Breakfast
Chorizo in Frittatas
We love chorizo in a frittata because, once again, you can caramelise the onions in the chorizo oil. We use fresh chorizo for frittatas, as well as the soft crumbly texture goes so well with light fluffy eggs, melding in with the eggs and other ingredients.
The best bit about a chorizo frittata is that there’s no stress in having to flip it like a Spanish tortilla which requires the ‘plate over pan technique’ to flip the tortilla to cook the other side. You can simply slice it up and serve it with a salad, which provides a nice contrast to the spice of the chorizo.
Frittata Recipe with Chorizo and Caramelised Onions for Weekend Eggs
Please do let us know in the comments below if you have any questions on how to cook chorizo with eggs, tips to share on cooking chorizo, or feedback on any of our chorizo eggs recipes, as we always love to hear how they turn out for you.
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