A lot of recipes call for Spanish chorizo, which can be hard to find. What is a quality substitute?

I've made Spanish Paella using Andouille sausage. It's a Cajun meat that's a little spicy, but not to much. I got the recipe from the TV show The Chew. Worked great.

matt, where are you shopping? (israel is different from chicago)In Massachusetts we have an excellent Portuguese-American chorizo and linguica producer, Gasparo. It is a fresh 'soft'/uncured sausage but has the same pimenton flavor profile as dry cured imported Spanish chorizo like Palacio (found at numerous gourmet stores here in boston.)
p.s.Also, have you gone on your local Chowhound board? They are often very helpful with sources etc.

I'm fortunate to be near a Spanish Table store, and can attest to the quality and variety of their Chorizo- also the place to go for linguica. Silva, the ubiquitous linguica maker, has a Spanish style chorizo that should be fairly available, but I haven't tried it- i don't like their linguica. Niman's Ranch also sells a chorizo that they call Spanish style, but it's a raw sausage and doesn't resemble the Spanish types I've tried- it is, however, very good sausage.

I second amysarah. It will depend on the dish, but I think that in many cases if you use a straightforward hard sausage and add to the dish a bit of pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika), you could have a reasonable substitution.

As noted, there isn't really a direct sub. Do you need picante (spicy) or dulce (sweet) chorizo? If spicy, you could try andouille and add smoked paprika - characteristic flavor of Spanish chorizo - to your recipe for a facsimile, if that's any easier to find. Or, use another dry cured sweet pork sausage - maybe kielbasa (not smoked or seasoned with caraway, etc.,) and again, add smoked paprika.

If any place near you carries Goya products, you might check that section of the market - their dry cured Spanish is sold vacuum packed on the shelf, not with the refrigerated sausages.

I live in an area where I cannot find chirizo of any kind. I can however get a very good hard cured salami so I have substituted it many times. I will admit that I'm sure my recipes don't taste the way they were intented, but I've not had any complaints.

I've been in your shoes plenty of times -- maybe try a ground meat combo you like with tons of herbs to replicate the idea? If it's more for the salty-spicy element maybe some Spanish ham and spices?

You can substitute with Portuguese chourico. Though I'm not sure how much easier that is to find.

I agree with ChefJune that there really isn't any great substitute. Here's another online source, they have many different varieties of Spanish chorizo.
http://www.spanishtable.com/category/embutidos.html

There is really nothing else that is the same, although any good hard sausage (like sopressata could be used. If I didn't live where I had access to Spanish chorizo, I'd probably mail order it from Zingermann's in Ann Arbor Michigan.