How chorizo became a British staple Chorizo, however, has become more embedded an essential than most. Waitrose now has 17 different varieties on its shelves and sold five times more chorizo in 2012 than in 2008. "It is hugely popular with customers," says Adam Kennedy, the deli buyer at the supermarket. Leeds-based Asda sells tons of the stuff: diced, sliced and raw, with sales up 10 per cent this year. It even sells a chorizo pork pie - "a little bit of spice in our golden pastry," the packaging boasts. Earlier this year, Kantar Worldpanel, which closely monitors supermarket sales, said that sliced continental meats were now bought by over half of British households, and the simple pack of sliced turkey was at risk of being overtaken by chorizo. The TV chefs have no doubt helped. If you open a book by Jamie, Nigel or Nigella you will struggle to find many dishes incorporating a Cumberland sausage or black pudding, but they are all stuffed with ideas about what to do with chorizo. So what is the secret of its appeal? The most distinctive aspect of chorizo is of course its red colour, which leaches out into any dish it is added to. This comes from Spanish paprika or pimenton, an ingredient which only arrived in Europe from America after the Conquistadors. But it is the flavour that has won the sausage its legions of fans, according to Jose Pizarro, who runs a couple of fashionable Spanish restaurants in south London. "The British love to discover new things," he says. And the flavour is just incredible - all that smokiness, and garlic and spice. Also, it is so flexible. It can go in almost any dish. That is part of chorizo's charm: you can buy it cured and sliced, as an alternative to salami to put in a sandwich. Or you can buy it raw, either sweetly garlicky or fiery hot, to be fried or grilled and scattered on a salad, added to an omelette or slow-cooked in a casserole. "Chorizo is not a sausage," says Pizarro. It is a way of life. And it is a way of life still attracting new followers. James Robinson, head of sales at Brindisa, a delicatessen which also acts as a wholesaler supplier to restaurants, says: "The biggest growth is with cooking chorizo, especially the smoky ones from the Leon region of northern Spain." This dense version, which uses a lot of garlic and is lightly smoked over oak chips, is particularly popular with restaurants which tend to use it in stews or poached in wine. Robinson, for one, is not surprised at how chorizo has ended up alongside the bottle of ketchup and block of cheddar in our fridges, despite its slightly alarming hue and difficult to pronounce name (is it "choritso" or "choreetho"?). The British love a banger, and they love spicy food. Put the two together and hey presto," he says. Once people realised it was essentially a slightly spicy cooking sausage, they were able to get over their fear of it being something foreign.