Taste Colombia
Three potatoes in one soup, if you are doing Bogotá properly. Colombian cooking is Andean, Caribbean and Amazonian, and ajiaco is the highland argument.
Ajiaco is a Bogotá chicken soup of several potato varieties, corn on the cob, guasca herb, capers and cream — a bowl you finish at the table. It is not a generic chicken soup with a flag. Coastal cooking fries fish and coconut rice; Antioquia plates bandeja paisa with beans, rice, plantain, egg and meat until the platter sags on purpose; the coffee region and the llanos grill. Arepas change shape by department. Hogao is the onion-tomato sofrito. Aji is a table sauce of chilli and coriander. The potato is Andean; the soup is capital-city identity as much as farm cooking.
14 recipes · 1 cuisine
Essential dishes
Checking your allergy settings…
More dishes
Further Colombia listings, including shorter editorial recipes and imported methods.
Checking your allergy settings…
Regional cuisines
Think you know Colombia food?
13 quiz dishes. Optional — Passport stamps still come from cooking.
Take the Colombia food quizFood history
Muisca highland agriculture, Caribbean African frying, Spanish chicken and dairy, and a republic that still eats regionally. Ajiaco's three-potato rule is a Bogotá standardisation of an older highland pot; guasca is the herb that makes it itself. Arepa maize is older than the soup. Twentieth-century internal migration carried costeño and paisa plates into the capital. Honesty means not letting ajiaco stand for the Caribbean or the Amazon, and not treating bandeja paisa as everyday rather than a feast platter. Regions remain the useful map.