Taste Peru
Perú
Pacific fish, Andean potatoes, Amazon fruit and a lime-sharp national confidence. The altitude changes the pantry as much as the coast does.
Ceviche is the headline: raw fish, lime, chilli, onion, eaten at once, with sweet potato and corn to catch the leche de tigre. Lomo saltado is a chifa stir-fry of beef, onion, tomato and soy, served with both rice and chips because Peru refused to choose. Ají de gallina is shredded chicken in a bread-thickened yellow chilli sauce. Anticuchos are grilled heart, usually beef now, with a smoky chilli marinade from a street skewer culture that predates the restaurant boom. The Andes cook freeze-dried potato and long stews; the Amazon uses jungle produce most of the world still does not know. Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei and Chinese-Peruvian chifa are Peruvian cooking, not footnotes.
10 recipes · 1 cuisine
Essential dishes
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More dishes
Further Peru listings, including shorter editorial recipes and imported methods.
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Regional cuisines
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Take the Peru food quizFood history
Pre-Columbian agriculture — potato, chilli, maize, tomato relatives — met Spanish, African, Japanese and Chinese migrations. Ceviche's acid-cooked fish is older than the Republic; the current lime-and-onion style is more recent. Lima's restaurant boom did not invent Peruvian food; it amplified kitchens that were already there, including the chifa wok and the Nikkei raw-fish conversation. Honesty here means naming the coast, the sierra or the jungle, not a single national plate.
Common ingredients
Techniques
- acid curing
- aji blending
- potato cooking
- stir-fry chifa
- grilling anticucho