Dinner94

Dinner across the region means slow-cooked stews, grilled and roasted meats, seafood and soups built on rice, beans, corn and root vegetables.
Belizean stew chicken simmered in red recado is the anchor, with boil up, chirmole, cow foot soup and crab stew beside it. The coast contributes hudut and sere; the wider region brings Jamaican brown stew, Cuban ropa vieja, Puerto Rican pernil and Haitian soup joumou.
Belize is the heart of this collection. The rest of the Caribbean and Central America is where its cousins live.

Leaf-wrapped highland stew in the style of subanik, a Kaqchikel Maya ceremonial dish from Guatemala
Subanik Recipe DinnerGuatemalaMaya

Subanik Recipe

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…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Guatemalan revolcado, a pork-head stew in thick red recado
Revolcado DinnerGuatemala

Revolcado

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…
Joe Post
August 4, 2026
Guatemalan paches, potato-masa tamales steamed in banana leaf
Paches DinnerGuatemala

Paches

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.…
Joe Post
August 4, 2026
Indigenous Guatemalan Maya women in traditional dress preparing typical highland food
Pulique DinnerGuatemala

Pulique

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…
Joe Post
August 4, 2026
Queso relleno yucateco, a ball of Edam cheese stuffed with pork picadillo
Queso Relleno DinnerMexico

Queso Relleno

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…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Chaya leaves, the Maya spinach used in caldo de chaya
Ts’anchak (Caldo de Chaya) DinnerMayaMexico

Ts’anchak (Caldo de Chaya)

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…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Plated Guatemalan chiles rellenos with white rice
Chiles Rellenos Guatemaltecos DinnerGuatemala

Chiles Rellenos Guatemaltecos

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…
Joe Post
August 4, 2026
Guatemalan tamales colorados, the red-recado tamal served with bread and coffee
Tamales Colorados DinnerGuatemala

Tamales Colorados

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…
Isela Post
August 4, 2026
Steamed tamales, the dish the cull (k'ol) fills
K’ol Recipe BelizeDinnerMaya

K’ol Recipe

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,…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Fresh loroco flower buds, the Guatemalan finishing ingredient for pollo en crema
Pollo en Crema DinnerGuatemala

Pollo en Crema

Pollo en crema is a Central American dish of bone-in chicken in a cultured-cream sauce built on tomatillo or tomato, with guisquil, carrot, and potato. The Guatemalan version is vegetable-forward, mildly seasoned, and often finished with loroco. It is everyday food — the kind of Sunday pot that feeds the whole table — and it won the 2011 AGEXPORT competition for most representative Guatemalan dish in the loroco variant. Every July, Chimaltenango hosts a festival celebrating it. That is not a country hedging about its cuisine. Ingredients The sauce is…
Isela Post
August 4, 2026
Dried red chiles in a stone molcajete, the recado base for hilachas
Hilachas DinnerGuatemala

Hilachas

Short answer: Hilachas is a Guatemalan home stew of beef shredded into fine threads and simmered in a tomato-and-tomatillo recado built on guajillo chiles, cinnamon, and cloves, with potato, carrot, and green beans cooked in. The name means rags or threads, for the way long-simmered flank steak pulls apart into strands. It is a ladino dish — everyday comedor food, not Maya heritage — and its signature is a double process: you cook the beef until it shreds, then separately build and fry a smooth recado before combining them. That…
Joe Post
August 4, 2026
Fresh tomatillos, the green base of the sauce for Guatemalan jocón
Jocón DinnerGuatemala

Jocón

Short answer: Jocón is one of Guatemala's four great Maya recados: chicken simmered in a bright green sauce of tomatillos, scallions, cilantro, epazote, and green chiles, with body from toasted pumpkin and sesame seeds ground fine and a little torn tortilla. The name comes from the K'iche' word jok'om, meaning mashed or ground — a direct reference to that seed-grinding step at the heart of the technique. It is a dish of the western highlands, declared national Intangible Cultural Heritage of Guatemala in 2007, and it is the stew that…
Joe Post
August 4, 2026
Joroches Recipe BelizeDinnerMaya

Joroches Recipe

In Mérida, you find joroches on the table without ceremony. A bowl of black beans, a few masa balls floating in it, chiltomate over the top. That is the whole dish. Simple food, Maya food. It feeds you. On this side of the border we know it too. The name, the beans, the way you work the dough between your palms. Some people call them joloches. The word is the same. Just the tongue moves different. What are joroches? Joroches (also spelled joloches) are small corn masa balls cooked directly…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Maya woman in traditional dress standing in adobe kitchen with cooking pots — chulibuul, Belize
Chulibuul Recipe BelizeDinnerMaya

Chulibuul Recipe

Chulibuul is a pre-Hispanic Maya bean and corn soup from the Yucatan Peninsula. You grind the tender corn kernels and that is the thickener. No flour, no starch. Beans and ground corn together give a complete protein the old way, before meat was the center of every pot. Make this when the corn and beans are fresh and tender. Editor's Note: Sometimes Yucatecan Chulibuul is spelt Chulibul or Chulibull but don't confuse it with the Asian dish "Chulbuli" which is a type of chutney. Ingredients 8 ears tender corn (elotes),…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
chocolomo recipe steaming meat and broth on ladle belize
Chocolomo Recipe DinnerMayaMexico

Chocolomo Recipe

Chocolomo is a Maya organ meat stew from northern Belize and the Yucatan Peninsula, made from beef or pork heart, tripe, loin, liver, and kidney slow-cooked with recado, bitter orange, charred onion, garlic, and fresh mint. A post-slaughter dish by tradition, it is prepared the same day the animal is butchered. In Xaibe, when you butchered a pig or res, you cooked chocolomo that same day. The heart, the tripe, the liver, the kidneys. Those went into the pot first, and nothing was wasted. Corozal and Chetumal are separated by…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Panuchos, fried tortillas stuffed with black beans and topped with meat and pickled onion
Panuchos Yucatecos DinnerMayaMexico

Panuchos Yucatecos

Panuchos yucatecos are small corn tortillas cooked dry on a comal until they puff, then split open and stuffed with seasoned black beans before being fried in lard. They are topped with shredded meat, cabbage, pickled onion, and avocado.
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Bowl of tapado, the Garifuna coconut seafood stew of the Honduran coast, with fish, plantain, and yuca
Tapado BelizeDinnerGarifuna

Tapado

Tapado is the Garifuna coconut seafood stew of the Honduran Caribbean coast, a one-pot dish of whole fish, shrimp, and shellfish simmered with green plantain, yuca, and fresh coconut milk, seasoned with culantro and annatto. The coastal version, tapado costeño, is sweet and creamy; the inland tapado olanchano uses meat instead. A pot of tapado tells you where you are before you taste it. The smell of coconut milk thickening over fish, the green plantain and yuca going soft in the broth, a whole fish laid across the top of…
Isela Post
August 4, 2026
Belizean Creamed Callaloo Soup Recipe
Callaloo BelizeDinner

Callaloo

Our Belizean Creamed Callaloo Soup recipe is a blend of nutritious callaloo leaves and cream, this soup is a comforting, heartwarming dish.
Joe Post
August 4, 2026
Belizean Picadillo Recipe - Completed Recipe for Pork Meatballs in Chirmole Soup Belize Style Black Dinner
Belizean White Relleno Recipe BelizeDinner

Belizean White Relleno Recipe

Today, we're taking a deep dive into the heart of Belizean cuisine with a classic dish that's bound to captivate your taste buds: the Belizean White Relleno. This recipe combines rich flavors and textures, making it a perfect choice for family gatherings or special occasions. Relleno Blanco or White Relleno is a favorite Belizean dish around holidays and New Year's Eve celebrations. Relleno Blanco is related to the typical Relleno (single word, implying "black" or "negro"). They both share similar spice flavor profiles but they differ in that White Relleno…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026