Dinner59

Short answer: Kak'ik is a Q'eqchi' Maya turkey soup from the highlands of Alta Verapaz, one of Guatemala's nationally declared culinary treasures and a pre-Hispanic dish. The name is Q'eqchi' Maya: kak means red, ik means chile. It is a clear, deep red, spicy broth built on a dry-roasted recado of tomatoes, tomatillos, and dried chiles (the smoky chile cobanero foremost among them), poured over long-simmered turkey and finished bright with mint, cilantro, and zamat (culantro). The broth does the talking. Seeds and masa stay out of it. This is…

Short answer: Pepián de pollo is Guatemala's national dish — chicken simmered in a recado built from dry-roasted tomatoes, tomatillos, dried chiles, and ground pumpkin and sesame seeds. It is a Maya dish, declared part of Guatemala's national cultural heritage in 2007, and every bit of its flavor lives in the recado. You char the vegetables on a dry comal, toast the seeds separately until they smell like roasted nuts, then grind it all smooth. That double toasting is the whole technique. Skip it and you have a different, lesser…

Short answer: Sopa de caracol is the Honduran conch soup, a creamy coconut-milk broth with conch, yuca, green plantain, and carrot, rooted in the Garifuna kitchen of the Caribbean coast. It is close kin to the conch soup we make in Belize, which makes sense: it is the same coast, the same Garifuna people, the same conch. The one rule that decides whether it is tender or rubber: barely cook the conch. It goes in at the very end and cooks in the heat of the pot, not on the…

Short answer: Pollo chuco is Honduras's signature messy street plate: crispy fried chicken piled over a bed of fried green-banana tajadas, buried under tangy cabbage slaw, fresh chismol, pickled red onions, and a stripe of ketchup-and-pink-sauce. The name means dirty chicken in San Pedro Sula slang, and the mess is the whole point. It is a full composed plate, not a snack — no tortilla anywhere on it. Honduras's tortilla snacks are easy to mix up. Here is how catracha, baleada, enchilada, and tustaca differ. The plate is built in…

Tamales negros are Guatemalan Christmas tamales built on corn masa worked with a dark, slightly sweet chocolate mole called recado negro. They are filled with pork or chicken, prune, raisin, and almond, then wrapped in banana leaf and steamed. The sweet chocolate masa is what sets them apart from red tamales colorados. The first time you smell a recado negro coming together on the stove, you do not expect chocolate. You expect chile and tomato and the deep toasted smell of pepitoria. Then the chocolate goes in, and the whole…

The plato típico hondureño is not one recipe: it is the whole table on a single plate. At the center sits carne asada: skirt steak marinated overnight in naranja agria (bitter sour orange), cumin, garlic, and oil, then grilled hard over open flame. Around it: refried red beans, white rice, fried green plantain tajadas, a spoonful of chimol (fresh tomato-onion relish), crumbled queso fresco, a drizzle of Honduran mantequilla cream, and slices of avocado. Warm corn tortillas come on the side to pull it all together, bite by bite. Independence…

Short answer: Fiambre is Guatemala's great All Saints' Day dish, a giant cold composed salad eaten once a year, on November 1st, to honor the dead. It piles together dozens of ingredients (often fifty or more): pickled vegetables, cured meats and sausages, cheeses, sometimes shrimp or sardines, all marinated overnight in a tangy vinegar brine called caldillo. The dish is unique to Guatemala and exists nowhere else in the world in this form. There is a red version (fiambre rojo, with beets) and a white one (fiambre blanco, without). It…

Sopa de frijoles is the everyday bean soup of Honduras: small red silk beans simmered whole with pork ribs, garlic, onion, and bell pepper until the broth turns deep and savory. Near the end, a ladleful of cooked beans goes into the blender, then back into the pot. That is the move that makes the broth creamy without cream. Each bowl is finished with ripe plantain, a soft-poached egg, and a spoon of crema, served with warm corn tortillas and queso fresco. Dried red beans and grains at a Copán…

Sopa de mondongo is a hearty Honduran tripe soup: beef stomach cleaned, simmered long, and brought together with yuca, green plantain, chayote, corn, and carrot in a herb-bright broth. Found across Latin America, the Honduran version stays clear and brothy rather than thick, leans on root vegetables for body, and finishes with cilantro and culantro. On the Caribbean coast, coconut milk goes in at the end. Ingredients This makes a full pot, enough for 6 people with rice and tortillas on the side. For cleaning the tripe: 2 lb honeycomb…

A nacatamal is a large Honduran tamale of nixtamal corn masa enriched with broth, lard, and achiote, filled with marinated pork or chicken, rice, potato, mint, and vegetables, then wrapped in banana leaf and steamed. Honduran nacatamales are Sunday morning and holiday food, heartier than a Mexican tamal and closely shared with Nicaragua. Why Hondurans Make Nacatamales for Christmas, Not Tuesdays A nacatamal is not weeknight food. It is a whole day, sometimes two, and it is rarely one person’s job. In Honduras the big batches come out at Noche…

Short answer: Machuca is the Garifuna dish of pounded plantain served with coconut seafood soup — two separate things, eaten together. You pull a piece of the dense plantain mash and dip it into the broth. What Garifuna communities in Belize call hudut, the Garifuna of Honduras call machuca. Same people, same coast, two names for the same inheritance. The Spanish word machuca comes from machucar, to pound or crush: the pounding is the whole point. A coastal kitchen in Tela, Garífuna heartland, where machuca is pounded by hand. The…

Pescado frito hondureño is a whole fish scored, rubbed with achiote, garlic, cumin, and sour orange, and fried until the skin shatters. It is served with tajadas of fried green plantain, curtido, and fresh chismol — the plate you find at beach stands and roadside comedores on both Honduran coasts and inland at Lake Yojoa. The Caribbean coast at Útila, where the day's catch comes fried whole. I grew up on Amapala, on Isla del Tigre out in the Gulf of Fonseca, where the beaches are black sand and the…

What Is Tikin Xic? On the coast at Isla Mujeres they split a whole fish open, paint it red with recado, and lay it on banana leaf over the coals. That is tikin xic. The name is Maya. It means dry fish, from the old way of drying the catch in the sun before it went on the fire. The fish is not dry when you eat it. The name stays from before. Is a dish of the Yucatán coast, from Campeche around to Quintana Roo, and you find it…

What Is Sopa de Lima? Sopa de lima is a Yucatecan chicken and lime soup: a clear, citrus broth built on charred tomato, onion, and chile, finished with the juice of the sour lima and topped with crisp fried tortilla strips. It comes from the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico and is eaten across the corridor down into northern Belize. In Mérida they serve this soup all year, in the heat too. The soul of it is the lima. Not the green lime you know from the store. The lima agria,…

Carne asada hondureña is thin beef marinated in sour orange, garlic, and cumin, then grilled over wood or charcoal. In Honduras it is served as a full plate alongside chismol, fried green plantain tajadas, refried beans, grilled spring onion, avocado, and tortillas. Threaded onto skewers, the same marinated beef becomes pinchos. You smell it before you see it. Drive any highway in Honduras on a Saturday afternoon and somewhere off the shoulder there is smoke, a steel drum split into a grill, and thin steaks turning over wood coals. The…

Cax is the Maya word for the hen. Caldo cax is the chicken soup we make from a yard bird, the way it is made all through the Maya country, in the north of Belize and across in the Yucatan and down in Toledo. A whole hen in the pot, achiote for color, the squash and the plantain going in near the end. You eat it hot, with lime and a piece of habanero, even on a day that is already hot. What is caldo cax? Caldo cax is a…

This subanik recipe follows the Kaqchikel Maya ceremonial stew from San Martín Jilotepeque, Guatemala: three meats (chicken, beef, and pork) bathed in a red recado of dried chiles and miltomate, then wrapped in maxan leaves and steamed until the sauce is thick and the meat falls tender. Why the Kaqchikel call subanik the meal of gods The name tells you everything before you taste a spoonful. In Kaqchikel, suban means a dish packed and wrapped in leaves. The suffix -ik marks any preparation that contains chile. Put them together and…

Guatemalan revolcado is a hearty stew of simmered pork head and offal napped in a thick red recado of charred tomato, miltomate, and toasted chiles guaque, pasa, and zambo, colored with achiote and thickened with blended liver and corn tortilla. It is a weekend and fiesta dish, served with white rice and hot tortillas. Ingredients This makes a large pot, enough for about 8 people. In Guatemala the butcher halves the head for you; ask yours to do the same, and to score the skin. If the butcher includes the…

Guatemalan paches are tamales whose masa is mashed potato instead of corn, blended with a red recado of tomato, dried guaque and pasa chiles, and achiote. They are filled with pork or chicken, bell pepper, and olive, wrapped in banana leaf, and steamed. Quetzaltenango invented them; Guatemalans eat them on Thursdays. Ingredients The masa is the part that surprises people. There is no corn in it. You boil potatoes, mash them hot, and bind them with a little corn flour or breadcrumb so they hold their shape in the steam.…

Pulique is a highland Maya stew of chicken or beef simmered in a tomato and tomatillo recado thickened with corn masa. Seasoned with the signature herb epazote, mild guaque chile, and achiote, this ceremonial dish from the Maya highlands around Sacatepéquez carries güisquil, potato, and green beans in a smooth amber broth. The first time you make this stew, the moment that matters comes near the end. You whisk masa into the pot, keep the spoon moving, and watch a thin tomato broth turn thick and golden in front of…

Queso relleno is the dish you make when there is something to celebrate. A whole ball of Dutch cheese, the queso de bola, hollowed out and filled with seasoned pork, then steamed soft and covered in two sauces. The white one is the white k'ol. The other is tomato. It is a Yucatec dish, and the cheese came to us the way many things came, through the ports of the Yucatan. What is queso relleno? Queso relleno is a Yucatecan stuffed cheese. A ball of Edam cheese, called queso de…

Chaya grows in every Yucatec yard, north of Belize and across in the Yucatan. The Maya call it the tree that feeds you. Ts'anchak is the white soup we make from it. A clear chicken broth, the chaya cooked soft in it, no achiote, no color. You finish it at the table with pepita, with egg, with habanero in sweet lime. Caldo de chaya is the name you will hear in Spanish. Ts'anchak is the name from before. What is ts'anchak? Ts'anchak is a Yucatec Maya chaya soup, known in…

Guatemalan chiles rellenos are roasted, peeled bell peppers stuffed with a picadillo of ground beef or pork and diced vegetables, then dipped in a whipped egg batter, fried golden, and served in a light tomato sauce. Unlike the Mexican version, they use no cheese and no chili-walnut sauce. Ingredients The pepper comes first, and it matters which one. Guatemalan cooks reach for the sweet bell pepper, the chile pimiento, not the dark poblano you would use across the border in Mexico. Everything else builds the picadillo around it. For the…

Tamales colorados are Guatemala’s red tamal: soft corn masa sauced with a recado of tomato, tomatillo, guaque and pasa chiles, achiote, and toasted pepitoria and sesame, wrapped around pork or chicken with an olive and a strip of roasted red pepper, then steamed in banana leaf. What Makes a Tamal Colorado the Guatemalan Saturday Tamal In Guatemala, Saturday is tamale day. A small red lantern hung outside a tienda signals that the tamales colorados are ready that evening. This is not a special-occasion food in the way an outsider might…

K'ol is the sauce inside the tamale. In Belize it is spelled cull, sometimes col, and it is a Mayan word. It is the thick red gravy, a chicken stock seasoned with recado and thickened with masa, that goes between the masa and the meat in a Belizean tamale. The same sauce, cooked with the chicken instead of folded into the tamal, is pollo en k'ol. Cull, col, k'ol. One sauce, many spellings. What is k'ol? K'ol is a Yucatec Maya sauce, a thick red gravy built on chicken stock,…