Recipe: Salchicha criolla (Peruvian-style pork sausage)

The most influential chef in the history of Peruvian cuisine, Gastón Acurio, shares quick recipes via his Facebook and Twitter accounts. Granted, 99% of them have rice, pasta or potatoes as foundation ingredients, but once in a while something I’d actually eat pops up. A long time ago I copied his recipe for salchicha criolla, his take, I assume, on salchicha de Huacho (Huacho being a coastal town in Perú), a very popular and tasty flavourful sausage usually eaten with scrambled eggs at breakfast.

A brunch at Efendy a couple of years ago revealed the fact that sucuk, the spicy Turkish sausage, is a close relative to our salchicha de Huacho. But that wasn’t enough for me: I wanted to make my own. Attempt #1 at Gastón’s recipe had a tasty but extremely salty result. For attempt #2 I cut back the salt in half and the result was great. I cook a batch once in a while and freeze it in ready-to-reheat portions.

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Salchicha criolla

This is a fresh sausage mix similar to Peruvian salchicha de Huacho.

Course Breakfast

Cuisine Peruvian

Keyword breakfast, dairy free, gluten free, Peruvian cuisine, Peruvian food, pork, pork mince, sausage

Servings 6

Ingredients

• 1 kg pork mince
• 1/2 tbsp salt
• 1 tsp sweet paprika
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp ají panca* (Peruvian dried red chili) powder
• achiote** optional, to taste

To serve

• eggs
• baked sweet potatoes

Instructions

• Mix all sausage ingredients and refrigerate for 2 hours.
• Fry in a pan (no fat needed) until browned, if using eggs add them to the mix and scramble them.
• Eat it Peruvian-style (as a sandwich) or my style (with baked sweet potatoes).

Notes

* Ají panca can be found in its hot and mild varieties in Latin American/ethnic shops such as Tierras Latinas in Fairfield and Fiji Market in Newtown. You can substitute it with any other powdered chili (preferably red, for aesthetics sake).

** Achiote is ground annatto seeds. I haven’t found it in its powdered version in Sydney, but whole annatto seeds can be bought from the same Latin American/ethnic shops mentioned before. Also, there are some achiote pastes available that can be used if desired.

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