Today we are going to be making a recipe that’s a must here in Spain. It’s a cocido and I’d say that everyone eats a variation of this at home.

The beauty of this cocido, which literally means “boiled”, is that is customizable and it can be healthy OR trerrybly decadent and rich.

We used chickpeas, carrots, chorizo, potatoes, vegetable stock, chicken breast, beef belly and a jamón bone. But many items can be added or substituted.

Chickpeas or garbanzo beans – you can use dry chickpeas like we did. If you use canned chickpeas you don’t have to pressure-cook them for 15 minutes, you can add them along with the potatoes and chorizo.

Carrots, cabbage, turnip and green beans can be used as vegetables.

Potatoes: please peel them. We don’t eat potatoes with their peels here in Spain.

Chorizo is a spicy sausage. You’d thought that mexican chorizo is spicier than spanish chorizo, but it is not. The difference is the kind of peppers that are used for each one of them. Spanish chorizo normally uses pimentón ahumado, smoked paprika (sweet or hot).  A famous one is called Pimentón de la Vera. 

We are using fresh chorizo, something like this one (but we bought it fresh from the grocery store).

Vegetable stock: a buillon cube would work as well. Or, if you are adding lots of fresh vegetables, you can skip the vegetable stock altogether.

Chicken. Chicken tights would have worked better than the chicken breast we used but someone here in my household doesn’t like chicken tights (and it is not me).

Beef belly: any beef cut that you’d use for a stew would work.

Jamon bone: we are looking for a salty and smoky flavor here. Sometimes when I make cocido and I have small leftover pieces of jamón in my fridge, I’d add those as well.

You can also add: a smoked bacon piece and morcilla, if you can find it. A morcilla is a blood sausage. In León, where I am from, we make our morcillas with blood, sourdough bread, onion, pig fat, paprika and a couple extra spices. But I guess this is not going to be easy to find outside Spain. Let me know if you are able to find morcilla or something similar in the comments!

There are even more things you can add to a cocido, like a “relleno”, but let’s keep it simple for today’s recipe.

Finally, and without futher ado, let’s see how you can make a cocido and its soup in the Instant Pot:

Enjoy!