Recipes

This is the full recipe collection: Belizean home cooking first, and the wider Caribbean and Central American kitchens it sits inside.
The Belizean core is stew chicken, rice and beans, fry jacks, panades, hudut and escabeche, built on recado, coconut milk, fresh seafood and corn.
Around it are the regional kitchens that share those ingredients and cook them differently: Jamaican jerk and brown stew, Puerto Rican pernil and mofongo, Cuban ropa vieja, Salvadoran pupusas, Guatemalan pepian and Haitian griot.
Browse by meal in the sections below, or by country and culture.

Tamales colados, smooth strained-masa Maya tamales opened in their banana leaf
Tamales Colados Recipe BelizeBreakfastMaya

Tamales Colados Recipe

People who have not made these before think they are like other tamales. They are not. The masa here is liquid before it is cooked. You strain it through cloth by hand. You cook it in lard until it sets. When it cools, it becomes something soft and smooth. Nothing like the rough masa you pat out for tortillas or bollos. That texture is the point. This dish comes from the corridor. Yucatan, Campeche, Belize. We make them here in Corozal the same way they make them across the border.…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Orange Walk Tacos Recipe BelizeBreakfast

Orange Walk Tacos Recipe

Orange Walk town has its own taco. It is not a Mexican taco. It is not a Tex-Mex taco. It is a rolled taco, built around recado chicken, served in the market and along the streets of Orange Walk District. You know it when you eat it. The tortilla is the thing. Without the right tortilla you have a different dish. People argue about it. They say you cannot make a true Orange Walk taco outside of Orange Walk. I understand the argument. The tortilla comes from the factory, fresh…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Polcanes frying in oil in a large pan, with white cheese and tostadas at a street food stall
Polcanes Recipe BelizeLunchMaya

Polcanes Recipe

Polcanes (also spelled polkanes or polcán) are fried masa fritters from the Yucatan peninsula. A thick disc of corn masa is formed around a filling of cooked white beans, ground pumpkin seeds, and cebollina, then sealed and fried in lard until golden. They are served topped like a tostada: salpicón, chopped lettuce, crumbled salty cheese, salsa on the side. Polcanes are antojito yucateco. Market food. Morning food. In Xaibe, we knew these from Chetumal. Go to the market in the morning and there they are. Sit down, they bring you…
Fili Post
August 4, 2026
Mukbipollo, the large Yucatecan achiote masa tamal baked in banana leaf for Day of the Dead
Mukbipollo Recipe BelizeLunchMaya

Mukbipollo Recipe

In Mérida, when November comes, you smell it before you see it. The smoke from the pib fires. Families that have not shared a kitchen all year are suddenly in one. That is what mukbipollo does. You can make it any time. The tamal shops in Mérida sell it year-round. But most people first learn this dish because someone in the family is making it for the dead. For the ofrenda. For Hanal Pixan. What is mukbipollo? Mukbipollo (also written pibipollo or mucbipollo) is a large Yucatan tamal. Not the…
Fili 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
Belizean Cassava Bread Recipe BelizeBreadGarifuna

Belizean Cassava Bread Recipe

Belizean cassava bread is finely grated cassava wrung dry, shaped into rounds, dried until stiff, then browned over heat until crisp. It is flat, firm, and slightly bitter. Nothing like wheat bread, and not trying to be. Across the Caribbean it goes by bammie, bammy, or casabe. The same tradition, the same process, names that shifted depending on who was speaking and which island or coast they came from. In Belize it is most closely associated with Garifuna cooking. I first made this the right way with my aunt, who…
Isela Post
September 3, 2026
Belizean Cassava Pone Recipe BelizeDessert

Belizean Cassava Pone Recipe

Belizean cassava pone is a baked pudding made from finely grated cassava and fresh coconut, sweetened with brown sugar and baked until the edges caramelize and the interior sets into something dense and slightly stretchy. You will also hear it called cassava cake, plastic pudding, or yuca pudding across Belize and the wider Caribbean. Different names, same dish. It is a traditional teatime food, eaten in squares at room temperature with nothing alongside it. My mother made cassava pone on Saturdays when the cassava came in from the yard. She…
Isela 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
Belizean Corn Tortillas Recipe BelizeBread

Belizean Corn Tortillas Recipe

Belizean corn tortillas are small, round flatbreads made from masa (ground corn dough), pressed by hand or with a tortilla press and cooked dry on a comal. They are the foundation of some of the most important dishes in northern Belize: salbutes, panuchos, panades, and Orange Walk tacos all start here, with this dough, pressed this thin, cooked this way. The corn tortilla is not the same as the flour tortilla. In northern Belize you find both. The flour tortilla is softer, more forgiving. The corn tortilla has more to…
Isela Post
August 4, 2026
Darasa green banana tamale on a banana leaf with fried fish
Darasa Recipe (Garifuna Green Banana Tamales) BelizeGarifunaSnacks

Darasa Recipe (Garifuna Green Banana Tamales)

Darasa is the Garifuna green banana tamale: grated unripe bananas bound with coconut milk and a squeeze of citrus, wrapped in a banana leaf and boiled until it sets. People who grew up on corn tamales expect masa and meat, and darasa is neither. It is softer, a little tangy, and built on green banana instead of corn. The one thing that defines it, and the thing recipes online most often get wrong, is that the banana is grated raw, not boiled and mashed. Get that right and the rest…
Isela 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
Cross-section of a Honduran baleada with beans, cream and cheese
Baleadas (Honduran Folded Flour Tortillas) HondurasSnacks

Baleadas (Honduran Folded Flour Tortillas)

Short answer: A baleada is a thick, soft wheat-flour tortilla folded over warm refried red beans, a pour of Honduran cream (mantequilla rala), and crumbled hard white cheese (queso duro). That three-ingredient fold is the baleada sencilla, the original. Add scrambled egg, avocado, or meat and it becomes a baleada especial. The whole thing lives or dies on the tortilla: thick, pillow-soft, pressed by hand, cooked fast on a dry comal. Never corn. Never fried crisp. The moment it folds without cracking, you have a baleada. Flour tortillas for baleadas,…
Isela Post
August 4, 2026