Making Food Blog

Some of my favorite food adventures happen when I have the opportunity to sample a food developed, or popularized, by one culture that has then been interpreted by another culture that is also foreign to me. These kinds of experiences are actually quite prevelant if you keep a look out for them. A prime example is when I ate at an Indian food restaurant yesterday that was run by a staff from Nepal while here in Japan.

This mornings breakfast exploration at the Family Mart introduced me to a Japanese rendition of Spicey Pork Chorizo. I love chorizo, so I jumped at the opportunity to have some while here in Japan. This turned out to be much more enlightening than I expected.

Traditionally, I enjoy pork chorizo with eggs on a tortilla because I love breakfast tacos. This is how I’ve eaten chorizo for most of my life, and I think I may have only included it in any other dishes a handful of times such as chorizo and potato tacos. That is because I always just assumed chorizo was a Spanish word for sausage and was a food of Mexican origin destined for tacos. Not so.

I was surprised to discover that chorizo is actually of Spanish origins and is believed to have originated in the Iberian Peninsula region of Spain. It is not shocking to learn that a food popular in Mexico actually originated in Spain, but I was surprised to learn that today the chorizo of Spain and Mexico have little in common beyond them both being a type of sausage.

Spainish chorizo is typically cured in contrast to Mexican chorizo that is typically raw (requiring cooking). This brings us back to the chorizo I purchased in Japan at Family Mart because this chorizo was ready to eat. It was a light color with a distinct red tone and mostly smooth texture. One cautious bite revealed that it was cured sausage.

As is typical of Japanese cuisine, the ‘spicey’ label on the package simply meant that there was a mild flavor similar to a pepper involved. In my experience the Japanese are not proveyors of excessively hot flavor so choosing spicey is usually easy for my palette to tolerate.

The Spicey Pork Chorizo of Family Mart in Japan had more in common with beef sticks and snack sausages from the States than my familiar chorizo of Mexican descent, but that just means they were more in keeping with the Spanish form of chorizo. Not a bad snack and definitely an enlightening food exploration for me. Once again, Japanese convenient store foor takes me into a new experience at an incredibly affordable price.