The Andes · Volume 21, Colombia, the Andean Interior

Bandeja paisa

Name: Bandeja paisa
Total time: 6 h
Yield: Serves six
Cuisine: Colombia, the Andean Interior
Ingredients: 250g dried cargamanto or red beans, pre-soaked; 300g pig's trotters; ½ green plantain; 1 large carrot; to taste seasoning; 240ml hogao, to finish the beans; 300g rice; 500g beef chuck; 6 chorizos; 6 eggs; 3 ripe plantains; 180g cornmeal, 240ml water, 50g melted butter, ¼ tsp salt precooked white cornmeal, water, melted butter and salt, for the arepas; 500g chicharrón; 6 morcilla; 3, halved avocado

Antioquia, Colombia

Bandeja paisa, a composed plate of beans, rice, pork and arepa: a large oval plate densely composed with a mound of red beans, white rice, shredded beef, a whole fried egg, a slab of golden crackled chicharrón.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time: 6 hours

Researched: Researched from 130 sources in the brief, none yet linked in the text
Reviewed: Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked: Not yet cooked and reported

by Antioquia, Colombia

Antioquia's history in layers runs on a different fuel entirely, and its best-known dish carries a myth worth dismantling directly rather than repeating. Bandeja paisa is widely said to descend from arriero trail food, a composed plate a muleteer could load with enough calories to survive days on the road. Colombian food writers reject this outright: the Antioqueño arriero was poor, and poverty does not build a plate carrying beans, rice, ground meat, chicharrón, a fried egg, arepa, plantain, chorizo, morcilla and avocado all at once. What the documentation actually supports is a disputed, mid-twentieth-century restaurant and tourism-marketing invention, with at least three competing accounts and no consensus among them. One, from the anthropologist and cook Clara Grisales, places its construction with Cotelco, Colombia's national hotel association, meeting in Bogotá in the 1950s specifically to invent a dish that could represent Antioqueño cuisine to visitors, and Grisales herself is sceptical of the result, saying plainly that calling it representative sits far from what paisas actually ate and eat at home. A second account credits the Bogotá restaurateur Hernando Giraldo, at his restaurant El Zaguán de las Aguas in the 1960s, with piling several dishes onto one plate for a commissioned event and, taken with the effect, keeping it on his menu under the name bandeja for the serving tray itself. A third names an even earlier appearance, in the 1940s, at a different Bogotá restaurant, under the name Plato Marinillo. What every account agrees on, whichever is closest to true, is that the dish was a restaurant and hotel buffet invention from the start, not a home dish scaled up: as one Antioqueño columnist puts it, few paisa households actually cook every component of a bandeja paisa on one night, because it was never built to be cooked that way.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Bandeja paisa

Serves six. About 6 hours, including bean cooking.

Ingredients

250g dried cargamanto or red beans, pre-soaked
300g pig's trotters
½ green plantain
1 large carrot
to taste seasoning
240ml hogao, to finish the beans
300g rice
500g beef chuck
6 chorizos
6 eggs
3 ripe plantains
180g cornmeal, 240ml water, 50g melted butter, ¼ tsp salt precooked white cornmeal, water, melted butter and salt, for the arepas
500g chicharrón
6 morcilla
3, halved avocado

Method

Simmer the pre-soaked beans with the pig's trotters, green plantain, carrot and seasoning, finished with hogao, for roughly 1 to 2 hours until tender.
Cook the rice plain.
Simmer the beef chuck in seasoned water until tender enough to shred.
Poach the chorizos.
Fry the eggs.
Fry the ripe plantains in batches.
Griddle arepas from precooked white cornmeal, water, melted butter and salt.
Prepare the chicharrón, morcilla and avocado separately, each finished at the last possible moment so nothing on the plate has time to go cold or soggy against its neighbours before it reaches the table.

Notes

The chapter is explicit that bandeja paisa is a disputed mid-twentieth century restaurant and tourism-marketing invention rather than old arriero trail food, with at least three competing accounts and no consensus among them.

What a modern chef changes

Nine Components, Each Done Right

Method

Treat each component of the plate with the same rigour as a langoustine, per Álvaro Clavijo's own stated method at El Chato, rather than treating the plate as one dish.
Cook the beef chuck sous vide to a precise, still-moist shred rather than simmering it to greyness.
Render the chicharrón properly, skin dried overnight and fried hot enough to blister rather than merely soften.
Griddle the arepa on a genuinely hot budare or dry pan rather than a lukewarm one, for real colour rather than a pale, steamed result.
Reduce a portion of the bean-cooking liquor with panela through the spice grinder's own logic of concentration into a small, glossy sauce, spooned sparingly rather than drowning the beans in their own broth.

Open in the atlas: cook mode, scaling and tick off lists