The Southern Cone · Volume 27, Cassava, Maté and the Chaco's Second Kitchen
Mbeju
Eastern Paraguay
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 35 minutes
- Researched
- 49 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
The Guaraní name means, literally, "starch bread." Distinguished from chipa specifically by the absence of egg, giving a denser, crisper result, and eaten daily as a merienda alongside mate or tereré rather than as festival food. No gram quantities were found; the ratios below are qualitative, as documented.
As tradition built it
About 35 minutes.
Ingredients
- 500g cassava starch
- 250g queso Paraguay, grated
- 1 tsp salt
- 100g butter, melted
Method
- Work the cassava starch and grated queso Paraguay together with a little salt and melted butter into a firm, sandy dough.
- Knead briefly and flatten to roughly a centimetre thick.
- Pan-fry, around four minutes per side, until golden and crisp at the edges.
What a modern chef changes
A more even fat distribution, and a controlled Maillard crust
Rung 1
Method
- Emulsify the melted butter into the starch and cheese in a high power blender before shaping, exactly as with chipa in Rung 1, for a more even crumb than hand-mixing gives.
- Cook on a plancha or a very flat, heavy pan held at a genuinely stable, moderate heat rather than a domestic frying pan's more variable surface, giving a more even, controlled Maillard crust across the whole disc rather than a patchily browned one.