Chosco de Tineo

Appearance & taste

The chosco is round and irregular in shape, weighs 500 to 2,000 g, and is firm and reddish. When cut, the individual pieces of meat are clearly visible; minced meat is not allowed. It is juicy and smells and tastes typically of smoked sausage, more or less intensely depending on how long it has been smoked.

It is sold raw or cooked as a whole piece, and cooked also halved or sliced. Cooked choscos must be packed because the casing loses firmness during cooking. Each chosco bears a numbered back label with the words “Indicación Geográfica Protegida ‘Chosco de Tineo’” and the common emblem.

Production

At least 80 % of the meat comes from the pig’s loin and at least 15 % from the tongue. The pieces are marinated in salt, paprika and garlic and stuffed by hand into the caecum. They are smoked with the smoke of dried wood of native species: oak, birch, beech or chestnut. Instead of open piles of wood on the floor, fire containers or other mobile “smokehouses” are used today. For at least five days the smoke rises to the choscos, which hang on rods under the roof or on racks, the “carros”.

They then dry for at least eight days in well-ventilated places until they have reached the right moisture level. All steps, from selecting and cutting the meat to drying, take place in the area of origin.

Origin & history

The area covers the Asturian municipalities of Allande, Belmonte de Miranda, Cangas del Narcea, Salas, Somiedo, Tineo, Valdés and Villayón. Between the coast and the Cantabrian Mountains the land rises steeply over a short distance; it rains a lot all year and the sky is often cloudy. Because of the high humidity, smoking was used for preserving and drying, at first with gorse wood. In winter the villages were cut off for long periods, and every farm kept pigs, which ate scraps, cabbage stalks, turnips, windfall fruit, chestnuts and acorns.

Herders who moved to the high mountains with their families and livestock from April to October took choscos with them as provisions, and they continued to dry at altitude; otherwise they dried in the well-ventilated granary. The chosco was mostly kept for important occasions. Records of the monasteries of Obona and Corias mention pig farming in the area, and according to the Cadastre of Ensenada the area had the largest pig population in Asturias in the 18th century. In 1920 a chronicler mentions the chosco as a snack at the San Roque festival in Tineo. The origin of the word “chosco” is uncertain; the Latin “luscus”, “one-eyed”, has been suggested.