Sarta or cular: why calibre changes everything in a chorizo

Faced with two chorizos from the same house, people usually think they are choosing between two qualities. In fact they are choosing between two calibres — and the calibre decides almost everything else.

Sarta: the slim piece, bent into a horseshoe

The sarta is the narrow piece, cased in natural casing, bent into a horseshoe and tied at both ends. Being slim, it dries fast: at Embutidos Hortanco, in Tafalla, Navarre, the chorizo sarta leaves the drying room after twenty-one days.

Its ingredient list fits in four words, readable on the back: pork, paprika, salt and garlic. It is eaten raw, thinly sliced, and carries light smoky notes.

Cular: the wide piece, and the time it demands

The cular is cased in the pig's large intestine — the casing that gives the piece its name. Diameter changes the equation: moisture has to travel through far more matter before it can escape. A cular does not come out before fifty days, at controlled temperature and humidity.

Inside, lean meat and belly, coarsely chopped. That coarse chop is what you see on the slice, and it is what gives the cular its chew.

And the salchichón

Same calibre logic, different seasoning. Chorizo takes paprika, hence its red. Salchichón takes a pepper blend, hence its pale slice. Sarta and cular exist in both versions: four pieces, two calibres, two seasonings.

A workshop of five

Hortanco began as a family butcher's shop in Tafalla. The house tells that in the late nineteen-seventies it built its own production, and that the first two pieces hung to dry were the chorizo cular and the chorizo sarta. Both are still made.

It has remained a workshop: five people. Their txistorra won first prize at the Navarrese txistorra contest twice, in 2012 and 2014, and was distinguished in 2024 at the Gourmet Selection show in Paris.

At the table

Cular is sliced thin and on the bias, and stands up well to bread rubbed with tomato. Sarta goes whole onto the board and is cut as you go. In both cases: at room temperature, never straight from the fridge — that is when the fat gives up its scent.