Catalan Embutidos

Catalan embutidos or sausages may look gross indeed but taste good, believe me. My wife has just advised me not to publish this picture. I laughed. I know it is disgusting but that's what makes it more interesting! By the way, those of you with linguistic habits should know that "embutir" means "to stuff", that's why they call it sausages in English. We use "salchicha" for hot-dog-like sausages and "embutidos" for all the products prepared in the same way, i.e. stuffing meat and fat, generally pork derived, into the clean bowels or guts of the animal.

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Sausage Spread or Sobrasada

Sobrasada (Sausage Spread) is in the group of sausages made with pork. It is prepared with minced meat and lard. The great amount of Spanish paprika or "pimentón" gives it the characteristic color and the peculiar flavor. Sobrasada is a Majorcan speciality. Although you can buy it all over Spain, the authentic, the one that really makes a difference, is from Majorca in the Balearic Islands.

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Sausage Closeup

This is just that, a closeup. A sausage so close you can feel the smell and you only have to stick out your fork and pick it up.

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Sausage Making Process

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Grilled White Sausages

When in Catalonia do as the Catalans do. Have yourself a nice plate full of grilled sausages, aka botifarra de pagés white or black. You ought to get off traditional routes of course. Not in Las Ramblas if you know what I mean. Go out, take a trip to the countryside now that it is spring time and see to find a place where you can have them cooked in the open, in front of you. As you wait, be generous with the wine, not sangria for Christ sake, no, a good wine or at least not the lousy concoctions tourists use to get for a higher price. Enjoy good Catalan food while you enjoy the nice weather. You can make it if you try, believe me.

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Meat Grinder: Sausage, The Making of.

Just an appliance: the meat grinder. Very common in Catalan towns when stuffing bowels with pork meat to make sausages.

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Catalan Food: White Sausages and Spring BBQs

This boiled white sausage ristra I captured with my camera a long time ago but now that Spring is coming and people in Catalonia tend to set out for countryside barbecues, it looks relevant. The sausages or butifarras in this story were cooked during a matanza (pig slaughter) that took place in Lleida, one of Catalonia's provinces. Some more pictures and comments about traditional Catalan cuisine were published here in the past: Blood Sausage and Catalan Sausage

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