A pork sausage from Extremadura made from Iberian pork fat blended with cooked, mashed potato and seasoned heavily with pimentón from La Vera, plus garlic and salt; a little lean pork is sometimes added. Despite often being called morcilla patatera, it contains no blood. The mixture is stuffed into casings; eaten young it is soft and spreadable, the most common form, while a few weeks of air-drying firms it enough to slice. It is most associated with the town of Montánchez in Cáceres province.
Patatera is a frugal sausage of the matanza, the traditional household pig slaughter, and is documented across Extremadura. Its first known bibliographic reference dates to 1798, where it is recorded as a food to relieve famine: potato, which had spread widely after arriving from the Americas, was used to stretch scarce pork fat into a sausage. It remains tied to Montánchez and other Cáceres villages, and features at local festivals such as Ceclavín's Día de los Caballos.
Soft, almost creamy, and brick-red from the paprika, with a savory pork-fat richness lifted by garlic and a smoky, gently sweet-to-spicy pimentón warmth. Spread thick on bread it melts a little against warmth; the potato keeps it lighter and looser than a pure-meat sausage. The cured, sliced version is firmer and more concentrated, drier on the tongue with a deeper paprika punch.
Mashed potato is the structural trick: its starch binds the rendered pork fat into a smooth, stable, spreadable paste, much as bread thickens other peasant dishes, while keeping the sausage soft and frugal. Pimentón de la Vera is dried and smoked over oak, so it brings colour, preservative power, and a smoky depth at once; blended through the fat it both flavours and helps keep the sausage. A short hang in cool, ventilated air firms the texture; a longer cure drives off more moisture for a sliceable form.
Variations
Patatera comes in dulce and picante grades depending on whether sweet or hot pimentón is used. The fresh, spreadable form is most common, but a drier cured version is sold for slicing. Related Extremaduran sausages include morcilla calabacera, which uses pumpkin instead of potato, and the meatier chorizo patatero. It is also cooked into stews or eggs, not only eaten raw on bread.
On the Palate
Where Patatera sits in the Spanish flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 12
How it's made
6 steps · 1 hour 30 min
- 140 min
Boil the potatoes whole in their skins until soft, about 30 minutes, then peel and mash to a smooth puree and leave to cool.
- 220 min
Gently render or soften the Iberian pork fat, mincing it fine, and mince the lean pork if using.
- 315 min
Combine the mashed potato, pork fat, pimentón de la Vera, crushed garlic, and salt, kneading to an even, brick-red paste.
Watch outKnead the mashed potato and pork fat with pimentón to an even brick-red paste — the potato starch binds the fat into a smooth, stable, spreadable mass.
- 45 min
Taste a small fried portion and adjust salt and paprika.
Watch outFry a small piece and taste before stuffing — you can't fix the salt or paprika once it's in the casing.
- 520 min
Stuff the mixture firmly into cleaned casings, tying off into links and pricking out any air pockets.
- 610080 min
Hang the sausages in cool, dry, ventilated air; use young and spreadable after a few days, or cure a few weeks for a sliceable texture.
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