Every time my wife and I go shopping at Sam’s I see and consider buying these ‘Chorizo Bites’ in the frozen-food section. These are basically breaded chunks of chorizo (a Mexican sausage made out of the salivary glands of pigs) that can be baked or deep-fried. I like chorizo as an ingredient in a number of dishes, but I’m not sure if I should buy these Chorizo Bites.
Has anyone tried them, or know of a restaurant where they are served as an appetizer?
Read William Poundstone’s book Biggest Secrets on Chorizo. Yes, it apparently is made from salivary glands and similarly unappetizing parts of pig, highly spiced to help cajole you into eating it. I realize that my sneering at this marks me as a member of a decadent wasteful culture that will only eat certain parts of the pig, but after reading the description I don’t think I could eat this. It sounds more disgusting than Head Cheese (which we recently had a thread on).
>> it apparently is made from salivary glands and similarly unappetizing parts of pig
I am no expert in pig anatomy but this raised my curiosity. Where would pigs have their salivary glands? Wouldn’t that be the tongue? And how can you separate them from the surrounding tissue?
I am willing to be corrected but AFAIK chorizo is made with pork meat. This page seems to confirm that:
http://www.premiersystems.com/recipes/mexican/chorizo.html
I am curious about the salivary glands part… does eating chorizo feel like kissing a pig? 
AGHRHAAAAAAAAAA!
I never intended to eat pig salivary gland and egg tacos.
William Poundstone wrote an entire book about the “biggest” secrets of Chorizo WTF?
I opened this thread to find out where I could get some Chorizo bites and now this. :mad:
Unless someone comes up with some proof I say this is pure, unadulterated BS and UL.
Okay, sailor. Now I’m home, and Ive got my copy of Biggest Secrets. As far as Poundstone’s veracity, I have o say that any time I’ve found another source it has corroborated what he says. He seems trustworthy.
I quote from page 76:
“Chorizo s the spicy Latin American sausage made with cuts some people don’t like to think about. Try pig salivary glands and lymph nodes. That’s not a biopsy, it’s dinner.”
He goes on to say that these tantaizin ingredients are listed on the label of Carmelita Pork Chorizo, as required by labeling laws. So go into th supermarket, ye of little faith, and scrounge up a container of chorizo.
As far as salivary glands and tongues, he says that: “Tongues have salivary gand connected to them. A ‘long cut’ tongue has the glands still attaced; a ‘short-cut’ tongue has had the glands removed and is considered a choicer cut.” Well, I should think so!
If you want a hilarious account of other exotic (read: disgusting) pig meats, read Dave Barry’s Last Gift Guide You’ll Ever Need on Pig Brains in Milk Gravy.
There’s GOT to be an entry on his stuff somewhere on the internet.
OK – I’ve just done a quic search. If you typ in just Chorizo on a seach engine you get benign recips that have no gross things in them, an a lot of websites trying to sell chorizo. The, of curse, don’t mention any questionable organs – they WANT to sell this stuff, after al. If you type in Chorizo AND Salivary you get a LOT of sites that tell you the gross unvarnshed truth (like this one, from Purdue: http://www.genome.iastate.edu/edu/PIH/128.html )
I conclude that there are at least two types of chorizo – traditional organ-meat chorizo and the gentrified stuff made from primo meat that shows up on the recipe sites. I understand something similar happened with fajitas, which in their original incarnation (before CHILI’S and others got their paws on them) were less delectable cuts of meat gussied u with spices, vegetables, an toppings.
Well all the recipes I’ve found on the Net just say pork meat, nothing about salivary glands but I guess you can make it out of anything you want. It still seems to me like what most people in Mexico would call Chorizo is just plain pork but that does not make for selling books so, of course, you would go for the extreme.
By the same token you could say Americans handle snakes in church. Good thing I am not religious.
Maybe I’d choose kissing a pig over handling a snake
Yeah, I know, over 3000 posts and I still haven’t said anything interesting. I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Cal: Here’s a Barry link.
I’ve eaten plenty of chorizo from the grocery store that had lymph nodes and salivary glands, among other things, listed in the ingredients. I’ve also had the “no disgusting organs” kind, which costs more and tastes exactly the same. I think I’ll stick to the cheaper kind.
By the way, if you ever see barbacoa on the menu in a Mexican restaurant, go ahead and eat some before asking what it is.
The best hot links have lots of those glands in them as well, and they have a similar taste to chorizo. I guess I LIKE salivary glands.
I feel I am about to gag… please excuse me…
I’ve always wondered why people are so horrified at the thought of 2nd rate meat in their sausage. I mean, what does it matter? If it doesn’t kill you or make you sick…
Besides, I really like chorizo, and I wouldn’t like any effete squeamishness to get in the way of some good, greasy burrito lovin’… 
I’d be more concerned about the artificial ingredients in the stuff than whatever pieces of offal or salivary glands used. Most of the chorizo sold in the town I live in is made fresh by the butchers. You can buy the processed,loaded with nitrates etc but it is just as easy to get the fresh.
Fajitas, as I understand it, were originally made from skirt steak, which is the diaphragm muscle of a bovine. Not too gross,IMO.
And I looove chorizo, even if I was previously unaware of it’s constituencies.
Hey…HEY now…we’re talking about food, here. Kindly stay on topic.
I guess I’m going to have to try them myself. I’ll let y’all know if they are any good.
No wonder that shit’s so damn greasy and slimy. Ugh.
–Tim