Pasta with Shrimp and Chorizo

On a recent trip to Frank's Meats, David spied a package of chorizo. As it's not a sausage we frequently have access to, we decided to buy it and stick in the freezer.

As luck would have it, a few days later this shrimp and chorizo recipe (courtesy of Fine Cooking), popped up on my Facebook feed. I immediately tagged it for a meal the following week.

The first step was to brown the chorizo. A couple of things to note about this particular product. First, the casing is plastic, which clearly isn't going to enhance a dish if placed in a hot pan. The second thing is the texture of the chorizo was on the dry side and rather crumbly. Not that it's a bad thing, just different from some other chorizo I've cooked with.

After the chorizo browned, the peeled/deveined shrimp went into the pan. They were left to cook only until they turned pink and just started to curl. 

It's really important not to let the shrimp cook all the way through. The recipe suggests about a two minute cook for the shrimp, but depending on your stove top, it could be less.

When the shrimp were ready, they and the chorizo were transferred to a bowl.

Some diced onion was put in the pan...

...then some garlic, tomatoes, and red pepper flakes.

While that mixture cooked away, I made the pasta. The recipe calls for linguine, which I could have made, but was feeling a bit lazy. Instead, I used packaged rotini. 

After the pasta was cooked and drained, the shrimp/chorizo were added to the pan with tomatoes, onion, and garlic. 

The shrimp only needed about a minute to finish cooking through, then the pasta was added.

Overall, we liked the dish but wished the chorizo had a bit more heat to it. That being said, I would definitely make this again and probably add a bit more red pepper flakes if using the same chorizo.