🇪🇸 Spain · Family: Bocadillo de Embutido · Heat: Griddled · Bread: barra · Proteins: pork
The Bocadillo de Chorizo a la Plancha is the griddled version: fresh chorizo cooked on a flat-top until it is slightly charred and its juices soak into the bread. The defining move is the plancha itself, a hot flat steel surface that sears the sausage's exterior while pushing out the pimentón-stained fat, which is the thing the sandwich is actually about. The bread is a crusty white barra, split lengthwise, ready to absorb that fat.
The sequence is direct. The chorizo is split open or cut into lengths and laid cut-side down on the hot plancha, where it takes color and a light char at the edges while the orange fat pools around it. The cut faces of the barra are pressed into that pool so the crumb drinks it up and the lower crust crisps. The sausage is then laid into the bread while still hot and the barra closed under light pressure. Good execution shows defined char marks, a juicy interior, and bread visibly stained with rendered fat. Sloppy execution either steams the sausage on a cool surface so it never chars, or cooks it so hard it dries out and the fat all burns off, leaving nothing for the bread.
The griddled version sits between two siblings and is worth keeping distinct from both: it is cooked, unlike the sliced curado sandwich, but it is seared rather than swimming, unlike the pan-fried version where the chorizo is shallow-fried in its own released oil. Cooks vary it with a scatter of plancha-blistered green pepper or soft onion cooked alongside on the same surface, but the strict reading is sausage and bread. The pan-fried Bocadillo de Chorizo Frito and the unqualified Bocadillo de Chorizo each deserve their own article rather than being merged in here, and the broader cured-sausage bocadillo family is a separate study.
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Other Bocadillo de Embutido sandwiches in Spain: