The Andes · Volume 17, Altitude, Chuño and the Picantería Table
Cuy chactado
Cusco, Arequipa and Puno, Peru
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Cuy chactado
Distinct from Cusco's oven-roasted cuy al horno
Ingredients
- 1, cleaned and eviscerated, about 1kg whole cuy (guinea pig)
- 3 cloves garlic
- to taste salt
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tbsp, ground ají panca
- 1 tsp oregano
- enough to shallow-fry, abundant oil or lard, for frying
- 4, yellow or native, boiled potatoes, to serve
- 1 cup, cooked mote cooked maize, to serve
Method
- Marinate the whole cuy in garlic, salt, cumin, pepper, ají panca and oregano for roughly 30 minutes.
- Flatten the cuy and fry in abundant oil or lard with a heavy stone or flat pan pressed directly on top to force the skin flat against the heat.
- Fry over medium-high heat for at least 20 minutes per side, until the skin runs deep gold and genuinely crisp.
- Serve whole, with potatoes and cooked maize.
What a modern chef changes
Sous vide render, plancha-crisped skin
Method
- Cook the cuy sous vide first, at a low, controlled temperature, to render it evenly tender through the whole carcass before it meets hot fat.
- Finish only the skin under the Big Green Egg's direct heat with a weighted plancha rather than a plain stone, the same pressed-flat principle the tradition already uses.
- Dehydrate the marinade's garlic and ají panca separately into a dust for the spice grinder, dusted over the finished skin.