A Community of Cooks, Food Writers & Recipe Testers SUBSCRIBE FREE
About ! Features ! HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE ! Columns ! Recipes ! The Cook's Marketplace !
Community !
F E AT U R E S
Pupusas
The best Salvadoran snack you may not know - but should.
SHARE:
Pupusa topped with tomato sauce, with a serving of curtido alongside.
Photo credit: Barbara Hansen
Barbara Hansen
Barbara travels widely and write about food, Mexican food, wine and travel. When she cooks, it is almost always ethnic.
The taco has a rival — a corn-based snack that has jumped in popularity outside its native El Salvador.
It is the pupusa, made of the same components as a taco but with significant differences. Instead of a tortilla, the
fillings are stuffed inside uncooked corn masa that is then patted into flat cakes and grilled.
The fillings are different too, not carne asada but highly seasoned pork, refried red beans, cheese with edible
green blossoms from a vine called loroco or just plain cheese that seeps out and browns appetizingly on the grill.
Pupusas come with a vinegar-laced relish called curtido instead of taco fixings and with soothingly mild salsa,
not one turned into an inferno by habaneros and jalapeños.
Bowls of tomato sauce and curtido. Photo credit: Barbara Hansen
Pupusas are everywhere that Salvadorans have migrated, and they’re scoring fans outside that group too,
because who could resist such a flavor-intense package of food?
In El Salvador, the pupusa is so wildly popular that it was officially named the national dish in 2005. Its history
goes back centuries, to the indigenous Pipil people, who filled their masa with beans, vegetables, blossoms and
seafood, which are abundant in El Salvador. The name means stuffed or puffy in the Nahuat language.
Later, the conquering Spaniards introduced pork and cheese, leading to the pupusa as it is known today. They
also brought in the cabbage and carrots that go into curtido.
In El Salvador, pupuseras (professional pupusa makers) can turn out as many as 20 a minute. Outside the
country, pupusas often aren’t as good as they should be, says Salvadoran cookbook author Alicia Maher. And in
many places, they are not available at all. That’s because Salvadoran migration, although large for such a small
country, isn’t widespread. In the United States, the largest concentration is in California, and especially in Los
Angeles, where Maher lives.
What to do? Learn to make your own pupusas. It’s easy, and Maher explains how in her book, “Delicious El
Salvador.” She’s well qualified to teach. Born in El Salvador, she learned to make pupusas by watching how it
was done in markets and restaurants. “They don’t have to be perfect. We’re not professional pupuseras,” she says
reassuringly.
In the book, she gives the three most common fillings. These are fried pork, which is called chicharrón, refried
red beans and cheese. When the three are combined, the pupusa is called revuelta. Pupusas are always served
with curtido, which contrasts with the richness of the fillings, and with tomato sauce.
It’s the fillings that go wrong in restaurants, Maher says. The worst offender is chicharrón. This same word
applies to Mexican style fried pork cracklings, and that is what some restaurants substitute for pork meat.
To make chicharrón, Maher boils pork shoulder until the water cooks away and the meat fries in its own fat.
She then cooks onion, tomato and bell pepper in the drippings, adding the pork. The final step is to grind the
mixture until fine in a food processor or blender. It is then ready to fill pupusas.
The stages of making chicharron. First, raw pork with fat, then seasoned fried pork, then blended fine for the pupusa filling.
Photo credit: Barbara Hansen
For the beans, she boils small dried red beans with onion and garlic, then fries the pureed beans in oil in which
onion slices have been cooked until golden.
For cheese, she suggests Monterey Jack combined with Salvadoran crema (cream) or, as a substitute for the
crema, sour cream lightly seasoned with salt. Another idea is to combine 227 grams (8 ounces) of mozzarella
cheese with 85 grams (3 ounces) of jack.
Cheese is an area where restaurants economize by using inferior grades, she says. An additional fault is
splashing the grill with oil as the pupusas cook. Authentic pupusas are baked on an ungreased grill. Enough fat
from the fillings seeps through so they don’t stick.
Curtido and tomato sauce are usually acceptable, Maher says, but restaurants may leave out the ground annatto
seeds (achiote) that she puts in the sauce. Salvadoran tomato sauce is not spicy, because hot seasoning is not
typical of Salvadoran cuisine, she explains.
Maher can buy authentic Savadoran crema, cheese and red beans in Los Angeles, but these aren’t needed to
make a genuine pupusa, nor is fresh corn masa required.
In the book and at home, Maher makes pupusa dough with instant masa flour, because it’s widely available in
supermarkets and online. And it’s convenient to keep on hand. She stirs the flour together with water in a large
pan, then kneads the mixture until soft and smooth, similar to bread dough.
To fill a pupusa, she forms a hollow in a ball of dough, adds the filling, seals the dough around the filling and
presses and pats it until flat. Another way is to divide each dough ball in half, flatten the halves, spread one half
with filling and top with the other half, then seal the edges. Pupusas are forgiving. If the dough should crack
slightly it is OK, she says. And if a little filling seeps out as the pupusa cooks, that is OK too.
Making Pupusas
A proper pupusa should be about 10 cm (4 inches) in diameter, Maher says. Restaurants often make their
pupusas too large and sometimes put in only a little filling, producing heavy, doughy pupusas. If the pupusa is
small, it is easy to eat by hand, which is the correct way.
Watching Maher pat out pupusas in the kitchen of her sunny hillside home makes clear that the task is not
hard, even though several components are involved. The fillings can be prepared in advance and frozen or
refrigerated, she says. They must, however, be brought to room temperature before using. If too cold, they
won’t spread out properly.
The fillings can be used for more than pupusas, she points out. Chicharrón also works as a spread or sandwich
filling. Boiled red beans are a staple in Salvadoran homes. When pureed and refried, as for pupusas, they can
also be a side dish or spread. When pureed but not refried, they are served for breakfast or dinner, accompanied
by fried plantains and Salvadoran crema. Recipes for all three are in her book, which is available through her
website, deliciouselsalvador.com, as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. There is more about pupusas on the
website, including recipes for summer squash and fish pupusas, which are among variations found in El
Salvador. There, pupusas are eaten as a snack, not as a main meal, and are bought outside the home, Maher says.
What inspired her to write “Delicious El Salvador” was an online American video in which a chef did
everything wrong, from using canned kidney beans for the filling to frying pupusas, which is an absolute no no.
Her goal was to make clear how pupusas are actually made as well as to present other typical recipes from El
Salvador.
The importance of the project convinced Federico
Trujillo, admired in El Salvador for his nature
photographs, to photograph the book. Trujillo, who
passed away in 2017, is known for the book “El
Salvador un Rincón Mágico,” which promotes the
attractions of El Salvador. Each recipe in Maher’s
book is accompanied by one of his stunning
photographs. A few scenes of El Salvador are
included as well.
Now in its second edition, “Delicious El Salvador”
won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for
best first cookbook in the world in 2014. The next
year it won a Gourmand award as best first
cookbook of the last 20 years. Maher’s Spanish
translation, “El Salvador, Sabores Deliciosos,” has Alicia Maher with her cookbook of foods from El Salvador. Photo
been nominated for a 2018 Gourmand award in the credit: Barbara Hansen
translation category.
The book is also being distributed in El Salvador, where home cooks are latching onto fast food and losing
touch with traditional recipes. There, cooking has always been passed on orally and visually, Maher says, and
cookbooks are a new phenomenon.
Alicia Maher's two Salvadoran cookbooks, in both Spanish and English versions.
Alicia Maher’s two Salvadoran cookbooks, the first in English, the second a translation into Spanish.
Barbara Hansen
A James Beard Award winner, Barbara Hansen writes food and restaurant articles
for The Los Angeles Times, where she was on staff for many years. She has two
blogs, www.tableconversation.com and www.eatmx.com, which is devoted to
Mexican food, and has written for Bon Appetit, Saveur and other publications.
Her six books include a best seller “Mexican Cookery,” two Southeast Asian
cookbooks, a book on bread and a guide to Korean restaurants in Los Angeles.
Dedicated to exploring ethnic food at home and abroad, she posts many dishes on
her Instagram site @tableconversation.
Courtesy photo
Read more from Barbara Hansen
Chicharrón Pupusas
Alicia Maher
Stock photo
Print This Recipe
Pupusas originated centuries ago with the Pipil people of El Salvador and were officially named the national
dish in 2005. The name comes from the indigenous language Nahuat and can mean “stuffed” or “puffy.” In early
days, pupusas were filled with beans, vegetables, blossoms and seafood, which are abundant in El Salvador. The
conquering Spaniards contributed pork and cheese, making possible the pupusas we enjoy today.
Ingredients
SERVINGS 434 grams (1 pound) pork belly or boneless pork shoulder (with a good amount of fat on it)
Makes 2 to 4 cut into 1-inch cubes
servings 2 garlic cloves, whole
2.5 ml (½ teaspoon) salt
30 ml (2 tablespoons) chopped onion
118 ml (½ cup) chopped tomato
30 ml (2 tablespoons) chopped green bell pepper
1.2 ml (¼ teaspoon) freshly ground black pepper
473 ml (2 cups) instant corn masa flour
473 ml (2 cups) Curtido*
473 ml (2 cups) House Tomato Sauce**
*Curtido recipe
**House Tomato Sauce recipe
Preparation
1. Rinse the pork in water. In a medium saucepan, over high heat, combine the pork, 473 ml (2 cups) cold
water, garlic, and salt. Bring everything to a boil, and reduce heat to medium. Cook uncovered, stirring once in
a while, until all the water has evaporated, about 30-45 minutes. Remove the garlic cloves from the saucepan
and discard.
2. At this point, the pork pieces will begin to render their own fat. Reduce heat to medium-low, and cook the
pork until golden and crispy, about 15 minutes. Remove chicharrones from the saucepan, set aside.
3. Over low heat, in the same saucepan and drippings, add the onion, stir and cook for about 30 seconds. Add
the tomato, green bell pepper, black pepper, and the fried pork; combine well and correct the salt. Cover and
cook everything for about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and let it cool.
4. Place this mixture in a food processor and grind until very fine, almost like a paste. Put on a plate, cover and
use right away. It is important that the filling is at room temperature. If too cold, it will not spread evenly.
5. Place the corn masa flour in a shallow bowl. Mix in 473 ml (2 cups) of water, 237 ml (1 cup) at a time. Knead
by hand for about 10 minutes until the masa is moist and fluffy. If needed, add more water, 30 ml (1 tablespoon)
at a time.
6. Over medium to high heat, start heating a non-stick griddle or large heavy skillet. Have 237 ml (1 cup) of
water ready to moisten your hands.
7. Divide the masa into 8 equal small balls. Hold one masa ball in the palm of your hand, push the center with
your thumb and fingers to make a hole and fill it with about 30 ml (1 tablespoon) of chicharrón. Close the top
by bringing the edges together.
8. Wet your hands, then gently press and pat the pupusa between your palms, keeping the edges thin. Flatten
into a round about 8 cm (3 inches) in diameter and about .6 cm (¼ inch) thick. Do not worry if a bit of the
filling comes out. Gently place the pupusas on the hot griddle, or skillet, and cook for about 6 minutes on each
side. Turn over often to ensure even cooking. The pupusas are ready when they puff up and turn slightly
golden. Serve with Curtido (pickled cabbage, onions, and carrots) and House Tomato Sauce.
SEE MORE:
~Appetizers
Alicia Maher
Read more from Alicia Maher
Salsa Casera (House Tomato Sauce)
Alicia Maher
Salsa Casera (House Tomato Sauce)
Photo credit: Barbara Hansen
Print This Recipe
This versatile tomato sauce is served with many dishes, including traditional favorites like pupusas, Salvadoran
empanadas and fried yuca. It also makes a delicious dipping sauce.
Ingredients
SERVINGS 473 ml (2 cups) chopped ripe Roma tomatoes
Makes about 5 ml (1 teaspoon) chicken bouillon powder
710 ml (3 cups)
2 garlic cloves, whole
118 ml (½ cup) chopped onion
118 ml (½ cup) chopped green bell pepper
118 ml (½ cup) chopped cilantro
5 ml (1 teaspoon) ground annatto seeds
2.5 ml (½ teaspoon) salt
1.2 ml (¼ teaspoon) freshly ground black pepper
2.5 ml (½ teaspoon) dried oregano
Preparation
1. In a medium saucepan over high heat, combine 237 ml (1 cup) water, tomatoes, chicken bouillon, garlic
cloves, onion, bell pepper, cilantro, annatto, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to medium
low. Cover and cook for about 30 minutes. Remove from the stove and let cool.
2. Pour the cooled tomato mixture into a blender or food processor and blend on high for 2 minutes or until
smooth. Return the blended sauce to the stove over medium to high heat. Stirring continuously, bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to medium-low, then cover and cook for 10 minutes. Correct the salt, and let cool. Sprinkle the
dried oregano on top before serving. The sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
SEE MORE:
~Gluten-Free
~Sauces & Salsas
Alicia Maher
Read more from Alicia Maher
Curtido (Pickled Cabbage, Onions, and Carrots)
Alicia Maher
