Chuchitos

As tradition built it

Chuchitos

Guatemala; etymology genuinely unresolved

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

The masa

• 900g dried maize
• cal (slaked lime)
• as needed water or oil

The recado and filling

• 900g tomatoes
• 2 chiles guaque from Santiago Sacatepéquez
• 2 chiles guaque común
• 1 chile pimiento
• to taste salt
• 900g pork or chicken, cut small

The wrapping

• 2 packs tusas (dried corn husks)

To serve

• to serve cheese
• to serve parsley, chopped

Method

1. Cook the maize with the cal, wash it, and grind it to a smooth, even masa, with a little water or oil if it needs it.
2. Cook the tomatoes and chiles and let them cool. Grind them on a grinding stone to a recado and salt it. A blender will do.
3. Put the meat in a bowl with some of the recado and leave it half an hour.
4. Clean, wash and dry the husks and lay them out.
5. Spread a husk with a little recado, then a little masa, a piece of meat and more recado in the middle, and wrap it. Some tie the end to make a little ball; in Santiago Sacatepéquez they only fold the husk and keep them flat.
6. Make a bed of husks in a large pot or a clay apaste and set the chuchitos on it. Add hot water, which shortens the cooking, and cook over a medium heat about an hour, until done.
7. Unwrap them and serve with more recado on top, cheese and parsley.

Notes

One source claims a K'iche' etymology meaning small, but the Real Academia Española's own historical dictionary treats the word's origin as genuinely unresolved, and the dictionary is followed rather than the folk etymology.

The recipe is the Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes de Guatemala's, from its Sistema de Información Cultural. Rocío Cetino, for Aprende Guatemala, makes the masa from a kilo of corn flour with melted vegetable lard, oil, salt and bouillon, fries the guaque with cumin, mixes the raw pork into the cooled recado, and steams the chuchitos on a rack about an hour and a half over a low heat.

What a modern chef changes

Concentrated filling, even steam

Method

1. Dehydrate a portion of the recado's tomato base before it goes into the masa mix, then rehydrate it briefly in stock, concentrating the flavour rather than diluting it into a wetter filling.
2. Steam in a Big Green Egg run as a closed, humid oven rather than a stovetop steamer, for a gentler, more even heat across a full batch.
3. Grind the filling's dried chile component fresh in the spice grinder immediately before use rather than relying on pre-ground chile powder, the same principle behind every other recado in this chapter.