Snacks40

Guatemalan shucos are grilled hot dogs built on a split, toasted bread roll: a smear of guacamol, a pile of boiled cabbage, mustard and mayonnaise, and your choice of grilled sausage or meat. The name is Chapín slang for messy. Shucos come from Guatemala City and Antigua street carts. The first one I ate, I ate standing up at a cart in Guatemala City, near eleven at night, the longaniza still spitting on the griddle. The guy split the bread, laid it face-down on the hot iron, and by the…

Catrachas are crispy fried corn tortillas spread with refried red beans and topped with crumbled queso fresco, the everyday street snack and party appetizer of Honduras. The name comes from catracha, the feminine of catracho, the word Hondurans use for themselves — so the dish is named after the people who eat it. Every catracha starts here, a fresh corn tortilla on the comal. Honduras's tortilla snacks are easy to mix up. Here is how catracha, baleada, enchilada, and tustaca differ. When I lived in Amapala, on the Pacific side…

Boxboles are a Maya highland masa roll from Guatemala — corn masa kneaded with chipilín herb, wrapped in squash or chayote leaves, steamed, sliced crosswise, and served with a warm toasted pepita and tomato sauce. The dish belongs to the Achi Maya of Baja Verapaz and the Ixil Maya of the Ixil Triangle, with related versions found across the Guatemalan highlands wherever squash grows and chipilín grows alongside it. What makes boxboles different from Guatemalan tamales? I came across boxboles not in a restaurant but in a market. Wednesday, early,…

Honduran pastelitos de carne are fried corn-masa turnovers stuffed with seasoned ground beef and diced potato, folded into a half-moon and fried crisp. This street-food staple gets topped with shredded cabbage, tangy chimol salsa, and grated dry cheese, sold hot from market stalls and home kitchens across Honduras. The first thing you hear is the crackle. A pastelito comes out of the oil deep gold, and when the cabbage and salsa hit the hot shell it goes soft at the edges and stays crisp in the center. That contrast is…

Quesillo Hondureño is a soft, mildly salty, stretched-curd melting cheese made from whole cow's milk. It is the cheese that goes inside a baleada, that melts into an anafre, and that gets folded between two hot corn tortillas for the snack Hondurans simply call tortillas con quesillo. It is not the same as Nicaraguan quesillo, a corn-tortilla street snack wrapped around soft cheese and pickled onions, or Venezuelan quesillo, which is a caramel flan. Same word, three foods that have nothing to do with each other. Why Quesillo Hondureño Is…

Honduran enchiladas are an open-faced street food: a flat corn tortilla fried until crisp, then built up in layers — seasoned ground beef with cumin and potato, shredded cabbage, a thin tomato sauce, a slice of hard-boiled egg, and a heavy shower of grated queso seco. You eat them with your hands, and they share nothing with a rolled Mexican enchilada except the name. Honduras's tortilla snacks are easy to mix up. Here is how catracha, baleada, enchilada, and tustaca differ. Ingredients The list looks long, but most of it…

Guatemalan chuchitos are small, firm corn-masa tamales filled with a simple tomato sauce and chicken or pork, wrapped in a soaked corn husk and steamed. Unlike the large, soft tamal colorado wrapped in banana leaf, a chuchito is a compact street snack — finished with fresh tomato salsa and grated dry cheese before you eat it standing up. The first time I had chuchitos, someone handed them to me still in the husk, hot enough that I kept moving them between my hands. That is the correct way to eat…

Anafre is the Honduran appetizer of refried red beans and melted quesillo cheese (often with crumbled chorizo) served bubbling in a small clay brazier at the table, kept warm over live coals, and scooped from a shared pot with totopos, crisp fried corn tortilla triangles. The clay pot is the defining object. When you order it at a Honduran restaurant, the brazier arrives first, still bubbling, and everyone digs in before the main courses come. That is the dish: a communal, fire-kept fondue, not a plated snack, not a topping,…

Enchiladas guatemaltecas are open-faced tostadas, not the rolled enchiladas of Mexico. A Guatemalan cook builds each one by layering escabeche — long-pickled beets, carrots, green beans, chayote, and cauliflower in a vinegar brine — alongside seasoned ground beef, a spoon of tomato sauce, a slice of hard-boiled egg, dry crumbled queso seco, parsley, and raw onion on a crisp fried tortilla. The beet-purple color and the egg slice are the unmistakable marks. The first time someone hands you an enchilada in Guatemala City, you wait for the fold. It never…

Tostadas guatemaltecas are crisp fried corn tortillas, each spread with exactly one topping: frijol (refried black beans), guacamol, or salsa de tomate. All three are finished with thin onion rounds, chopped parsley, and grated queso seco. The custom is to serve them as a set of three, one of each spread, so that each tortilla shows off a single thing at its best. They appear at home as a light appetizer, at family gatherings, and at Guatemalan ferias (patron-saint festivals) sold from the same stands that serve atol. Ingredients For…

Garnachas guatemaltecas are small thick corn tortillas, two to three inches across, that get cooked on a comal, sliced in half, and then fried until the cut faces turn golden and crisp. That double-step — comal first, then oil — is what gives them the density to hold a topping stack of seasoned beef, vinegar-softened curtido, simple tomato salsa, and crumbled dry cheese without buckling. Sold at street stalls and ferias across Guatemala, they are a one-bite Ladino antojito eaten by the handful. What Makes Guatemalan Garnachas Different From the…

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…

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,…

Craboo season in Belize is more than just a time of harvest—it’s a cultural experience wrapped in nostalgia. As children, many Belizeans would run outside after the rain to collect fresh craboo.

Our Belizean Honey Buns Recipe is an easy to make delicious treat that Belizeans enjoy as a snack or at tea time.