Taste Guatemala
Guatemala
The heart of the old Maya world, where corn is still ground daily and the national dishes are thick seed-and-chilli stews.
Guatemalan food is corn first: tortillas with every meal, tamales in a dozen wrappers, atoles to drink. The recados, thick sauces of toasted seeds, charred tomato and dried chilli, give the highlands their defining stews: red pepián, green jocón, turkey kak'ik. Black beans appear at breakfast, lunch and in sweet rellenitos. The Pacific coast and Caribbean Garífuna towns cook with coconut and seafood. Street baskets carry chuchitos and tostadas, and market comedores serve a fixed almuerzo of soup, stew, rice and tortillas for very little money.
4 recipes · 1 cuisine
All dishes 4
- 2 hr 5 min
Pepián de pollo
Guatemala's brick-red chicken stew, thickened with toasted pumpkin and sesame seeds, charred tomato and a burnt tortilla.
Medium
- 1 hr 20 min
Jocón de pollo
Jocón
Green Guatemalan chicken stew — tomatillo, coriander and spring onion, thickened with toasted tortilla.
Easy
- 1 hr
Rellenitos de plátano
Sweet ripe-plantain dough stuffed with cinnamon-sweetened black beans, fried and rolled in sugar.
Easy
- 2 hr 40 min
Chuchitos
Small, firm Guatemalan tamales in corn husk — masa, achiote-tomato recado and pork, steamed and eaten by hand.
Medium
Regional cuisines
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Take the Guatemala food quizFood history
The Maya domesticated corn and the nixtamal process, and the Kaqchikel and K'iche' seed-sauce tradition survives almost intact in pepián. Spanish colonisation brought chicken, pork, lard, rice, wheat, cinnamon and cloves, which were folded into existing sauces rather than replacing them. Coffee and bananas shaped the export economy and the Caribbean coast. In 2007 the state declared pepián, jocón, kak'ik and plátanos en mole national cultural heritage, a recognition of how little the core kitchen has changed.
Common ingredients
Techniques
- charring vegetables on the comal
- toasting and grinding seeds
- steaming tamales in husk or leaf
- frying recados
- nixtamal and hand-patted tortillas