Longaniza dominicana
Pork sausage with bitter orange, garlic and oregano. Fried and crisp, it is at the heart of the Dominican frituras.
| Fatty pork (shoulder or ribs with fat) | 800 g |
| Pork fatback | 200 g |
| Fine salt | 22 g |
| Fresh garlic, crushed | 20 g |
| Dried oregano | 6 g |
| Ground black pepper | 4 g |
| Bitter orange juice (agrio de naranja) | 40 ml |
| Hog casing (Ø 32–36 mm) | — |
- Preparation: Cut the pork and the fatback into 3 cm cubes. Refrigerate.
- Mincing: Mince through the 8 mm plate. The texture should be coarse and irregular.
- Seasoning: Mix the salt, the crushed garlic, the oregano, the pepper and the bitter orange juice. Add to the minced meats. Knead for four to five minutes. The seasoning is simple but strongly marked: the garlic and the oregano dominate.
- Resting: Cover and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours. The bitter-orange marinade penetrates the meat and gives it a characteristic citrus sharpness.
- Stuffing: Stuff into hog casings, forming one long continuous chain. Traditionally, the Dominican longaniza was made from pork tripe; today, artificial casings are commonly used in commercial production.
- Drying: Hang the chains in a cool, well-ventilated place for 24 to 48 hours.
- Cooking: Fry in oil over high heat for 8 to 10 minutes for the raw longaniza, or 5 minutes for the pre-cooked one. The skin should be crisp and golden, the inside juicy.
The name longaniza, like that of the Spanish and Chilean longanizas in this book, derives from the Latin lucanica, the oldest etymological thread in the history of the sausage. The longaniza arrived in Hispaniola with the Spanish colonisation and adapted to Caribbean ingredients, the most characteristic of which is the bitter orange (naranja de Sevilla, Citrus aurantium), a citrus introduced by the Spanish that became the basic acid of Dominican cooking.
The agrio de naranja, a condiment prepared by macerating the juice of bitter oranges with garlic and herbs, plays in Dominican cooking the role vinegar plays in European charcuterie: acidifying the preparation for keeping and giving it a base note. Dried oregano, added in a more generous quantity than in the Spanish longanizas, is the other marker. The seasoning is sober but intense: garlic, oregano, black pepper, salt and bitter orange.
The open-air drying for 24 to 48 hours is visible on Dominican country roads, where long chains of longaniza hang at roadside stalls. This drying concentrates the flavours and firms the texture without constituting a maturing: the longaniza remains a fresh sausage that must be cooked. The neighbouring Puerto Rican longaniza is distinguished by the addition of bija (annatto seeds) and by the possible use of poultry meat.
Fried (longaniza frita) belongs to the frituras, the fried snacks sold at street stalls. It is also the principal ingredient of the locrio de longaniza, a dish of rice cooked with the sausage, the Dominican equivalent of paella, and of the asopao de longaniza (a Dominican rice stew). At breakfast, it replaces salami in the tres golpes (the three main fried elements served together: Dominican salami, fried cheese (queso frito) and fried eggs).
The book
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