Spain has a wonderful tradition of spiced and smoked cold meats, known as embutidos – best translated as charcuterie or delicatessen. English doesn’t really have a word for this kind of thing, so we had to steal one from both the French and the Germans.
Chorizo dulce, made from pork meat seasoned with pimentón (smoked paprika)
Morcilla, the Spanish black pudding
Fuet: a dry-cured pork sausage from Catalonia
Chorizo is easily the most famous embutido; you can find it anywhere in Spain, with plenty of local variations. But there are loads more cold meats to choose from; many of them are regional specialities, so you can virtually eat your way around Spain.
Here’s a selection:
- Butifarra: spicy pork sausage often found in Catalonia
- Cecina: air-dried smoked beef from the north of Castile and León. Often served thinly sliced. Cecina de León is protected by the EU’s PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) label.
- Chorizo: spicy sausage, the Spanish classic. Seasoned with pimentón – smoked paprika – which gives it the characteristic red colour. Chorizo dulce is made with sweet (dulce) paprika. Chorizo Riojano, from the Rioja region in northern Spain, has the EU PGI label
- Chistorra: a pork sausage from Navarra and the Basque Country. Also spiced with paprika, but thinner than chorizo. Sometimes made with pork and beef.
- Fuet: a thin, dry cured sausage of pork, seasoned with garlic and pepper and originally from Catalonia.
- Jamón: Spanish ham is amazing, the best in the world (at least, I think so!) So good, it deserves a blog post all to itself! Read “how to buy the best jamón in Spain“ here.
- Jamón de York: the closest you’ll get to British sliced ham. But why bother? And why York? No idea.
- Lacón Gallego: shoulder of ham from Galicia in the very north west of Spain. Another EU PGI protected product (but I haven’t tried this one!)
- Lomo: loin of pork, usually smoked.
- Morcilla: black pudding, made with pig’s blood, rice, onions and spices. Another Spanish classic. Recipes vary from place to place. Often used in cooking.
- Morcilla Blanca: white pudding with pork. Similar to morcilla, but without the blood.
- Mortadela: sausage made from finely ground pork, often stuffed with olives. Slightly different to the Italian version.
- Salchichón: the Spanish hard salami, made from minced pork and often livened up with peppercorns. Salchichón ibérico is made with pork from the famous ibérico pigs, from western Spain near the Portuguese border. Pricier than your everyday salchichón.
- Sobrasada: a spreadable version of chorizo, also spiced with pimentón (smoked paprika). Originally from the Balearic Islands; sobrasada de Mallorca has the EU PGI label.
Small chorizo sausages, a Spanish classic
This salchichón (smoked sausage) is made with pork from the iberíco pig
See also my blog on how to find your way around a meat menu in Spain.
© Guy Pelham 2018
