I made a casserole today, one of my own recipes (it’s inspired by tamales, and ends up nothing like them, but is still good). The first step, of course, is to brown up some meat. But when I dumped the chorizo in the frying pan and tried to break it up, I found I couldn’t: It was all in casings.
Now, all the times in the past when I’ve used chorizo, it’s been loose. It might be shaped into individual sausages, but it’s still uncased. This is convenient, for the way I usually use it. But it occurs to me, maybe my old grocery store was just weird about it. Is it normal for chorizo to be cased? Should I expect this whenever I make anything with it? And if so, what’s the easiest way to get finely-crumbled sausage out of the casing?
I’ve never seen caseless chorizo, except loose in a flat pack. The stuff I get from the Mexican market ha natural casing. The stuff I occasionally get from Fred Meyer has a plastic casing. (Better remove that!)
I’ve seen all three: links in casing, “links” without casing, loose like ground pork w/ seasoning. And, actually, a 4th, chorizo which is aged, dry, hard and shelf stable, more like a pepperoni than a breakfast sausage.