Fermented sausage

Chorizo

Chorizo is a fermented sausage product. This page collects the facts this site can source: its cure type, where its protected names are registered, and the curing and safety parameters a named authority actually publishes. It does not print an ageing time no source publishes.

At a glance

Cure type: Fermented and dried
Meat: not fixed by the class definition
Origin: Protected names registered in Portugal, Spain
Protected designations: 10 registered (0 PDO, 10 PGI)
US standard of identity: none
Named by FSIS: no

Cure type and meat from the class definition; protected status from 2026-09-04 eAmbrosia, the EU geographical indications register. Full detail on the register and standards page.

How it is cured

Chorizo belongs to the fermented sausage family. The steps in that process, and the parameters published sources attach to each of them, are set out under fermentation with starter cultures. This site describes the process and its parameters; it does not publish a procedure to follow.

Curing salts

In US regulation the permitted curing agents are sodium or potassium nitrite, which fixes colour and controls Clostridium botulinum, and sodium or potassium nitrate, permitted only as a source of nitrite and not allowed in bacon (9 CFR 424.21(c)). Because products of this family are held for weeks or months, nitrate matters here: nitrate-reducing bacteria convert it to nitrite slowly over the cure, giving a reservoir a single dose of nitrite cannot. The premixed salts sold as "cure #1" (nitrite only) and "cure #2" (nitrite plus nitrate) are trade names for these agents, not regulatory categories. This site does not publish dosing; the ingoing limits are on the ingredient and safety pages.

The permitted agents and their ingoing limits are on the nitrite and nitrate chart entries, and the safety role of each is on the safety page.

Published time and temperature

The only time-and-temperature figures carried here are process-control parameters a named authority publishes for this kind of product. They are not an ageing style for any one maker.

Parameters

Fermentation base temperature (Staphylococcus aureus): degree-hours are counted above a 60 F base, until the pH reaches 5.3 or below; FSIS does not itself publish a table of maxima. detail
Shelf-stability water activity (Staphylococcus aureus): 0.85 or below stored in air; 0.91 or below vacuum packed. detail

FSIS Compliance Guideline for Ready-to-Eat Fermented, Salt-Cured, and Dried Products, FSIS-GD-2023-0002 · FSIS Compliance Guideline for Meat and Poultry Jerky, FSIS-GD-2014-0010, applied to other shelf-stable products by FSIS-GD-2023-0002

Ageing

No source this site cites publishes a typical ageing time or chamber temperature for this class. For a protected name the minimum ageing is fixed in the filed product specification, which the EU register does not expose through its API; it is reached through the register entry linked on each protected-name page. The time-and-temperature figures above, where present, are process-control parameters an authority does publish, not a house ageing style.

Protected designations

Each of these is a filed specification, protected across the EU. DOP and AOP are the Italian and French names for a PDO; the register records the scheme as PDO or PGI.

What this page does not tell you

This site publishes parameters and their sources. It does not tell anyone that a preparation is safe, because "safe" is a conclusion about a specific product rather than a property of a class. Curing controls real hazards with curing salts and with controlled temperature and humidity; the hazards, and the parameter that controls each one, are on the safety page. Nothing here is a recipe.

The full record for this class - the EU register entries, any US standard of identity, and the FoodData Central composition rows - is on the Chorizo register and standards page.

Protected status: eAmbrosia, the EU geographical indications register, retrieved 2026-09-04. Curing agents: 9 CFR 424.21(c), table of permitted curing agents (eCFR). Process parameters: FSIS compliance guidelines, cited above. Spine generated by scripts/build-products.mjs on 2026-09-09.