Chef Lupita
Caldo de Camarón con Chepil
A Lenten caldo from Oaxaca's Valles Centrales built on dried shrimp and chile costeño, thickened with a whisper of masa, and finished with chepil leaves that taste like nothing outside that state.
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Caldo de Res Oaxaqueño con Hierba Santa
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Oaxaca's bone-in beef shank simmered slow with corn, chayote, and cabbage, perfumed with hierba santa in the last minutes, served alongside a salsa of chile costeño toasted on the comal.
Soups & Stews
Mexican
Comfort Food
Make Ahead
Weeknight
30 min
Active Time
3 hr cook•3 hr 30 min total
Yield6 to 8 servings
This is a Valles Centrales dish. Oaxaca's caldo de res, not the one from Mexico City with cilantro and everything thrown in at once. The difference is hierba santa. One leaf, torn and dropped into the pot in the last five minutes, and the broth shifts from ordinary beef soup to something that could only come from southern Mexico.
Hierba santa is not epazote. I say this because people confuse them every time. Epazote is sharp, mineral, a bean herb. Hierba santa is something else entirely: soft, aromatic, with a perfume closer to anise and sassafras. The leaves are large, heart-shaped, sometimes a foot across. In the Valles Centrales and the Isthmus, it wraps tamales, lines cazuelas, and perfumes caldos. It is as essential to Oaxacan cooking as the chile pasilla oaxaqueño, and just as misunderstood outside the state.
The salsa on the side is chile costeño, the small, bright red dried chile from Oaxaca's Pacific coast. You toast it on a comal until it puffs, blend it with garlic roasted in its skin and a splash of the broth itself, and set it at the table. Each person stirs in what they want. The chile costeño brings a clean, sharp heat that cuts the richness of the marrow without covering it up. This is not a fiery broth. It is a quiet one. The heat comes from the side, not from the pot.
I learned the vegetable staging from a señora at the Wednesday tianguis in Tlacolula de Matamoros. Corn and carrots first because they are stubborn. Chayote and calabacita next. Cabbage and ejotes last because they give up fast. She told me: the timing is the recipe. The beef does the rest. My mother was not Oaxacan, she was jalisciense, but she understood broth. She would have liked this caldo. She would have written it in her notebook. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Caldo de res arrived in Oaxaca with Spanish cattle ranching in the 16th century, but the cooking method, a slow broth loaded with seasonal vegetables, maps onto older Zapotec and Mixtec traditions of slow-cooked stews built from turkey, venison, and native herbs. Hierba santa (Piper auritum) has been documented in Mesoamerican use since at least the Aztec period, where it was known as tlanepa or acuyo and served both medicinal and culinary purposes across the isthmus and southern highlands. Chile costeño, cultivated along Oaxaca's Pacific coast from Pinotepa Nacional to Puerto Escondido, remains one of Mexico's most geographically specific chiles, rarely sold outside the state and almost unknown in export markets.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
bone-in beef shank (chambarete)
Quantity
3 pounds
cut into 2-inch thick rounds
beef marrow bones
Quantity
1 pound
white onion
Quantity
1 medium
quartered
garlic cloves
Quantity
4
peeled and lightly crushed
black peppercorns
Quantity
8
kosher salt
Quantity
1 tablespoon, plus more to taste
fresh corn
Quantity
3 ears
husked and cut into thirds
carrots
Quantity
2 medium
peeled and cut into thick rounds
chayotes
Quantity
2
peeled, pitted, and quartered
calabacitas (Mexican squash)
Quantity
2
cut into thick half-moons
green cabbage
Quantity
1/4 head
cut into 4 wedges
ejotes (green beans)
Quantity
1/4 pound
trimmed and halved
fresh hierba santa leaves
Quantity
4 large
dried chile costeño
Quantity
8
stemmed
garlic cloves for salsa
Quantity
2
unpeeled
lime wedges (optional)
Quantity
for serving
hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)
Quantity
for serving
warmed
cooked white rice (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| bone-in beef shank (chambarete)cut into 2-inch thick rounds | 3 pounds |
| beef marrow bones | 1 pound |
| white onionquartered | 1 medium |
| garlic clovespeeled and lightly crushed | 4 |
| black peppercorns | 8 |
| kosher salt | 1 tablespoon, plus more to taste |
| fresh cornhusked and cut into thirds | 3 ears |
| carrotspeeled and cut into thick rounds | 2 medium |
| chayotespeeled, pitted, and quartered | 2 |
| calabacitas (Mexican squash)cut into thick half-moons | 2 |
| green cabbagecut into 4 wedges | 1/4 head |
| ejotes (green beans)trimmed and halved | 1/4 pound |
| fresh hierba santa leaves | 4 large |
| dried chile costeñostemmed | 8 |
| garlic cloves for salsaunpeeled | 2 |
| lime wedges (optional) | for serving |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)warmed | for serving |
| cooked white rice (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Heavy 8-quart stockpot or clay olla de barro
- •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for toasting chiles and garlic
- •Blender for the salsa de chile costeño
- •Sharp heavy knife for cutting through beef shank and corn
Instructions
- 1
Build the beef broth
Place the beef shank rounds and marrow bones in a large stockpot. Cover with cold water by three inches. Add the quartered onion, crushed garlic, peppercorns, and salt. Set the pot over medium heat and bring it to a gentle simmer. Do not rush this with high heat. Cold water draws the flavor out of the bones slowly and gives you a clean broth. A hard boil clouds everything and toughens the meat.
Ask your butcher to cut the shank into rounds with the bone and marrow intact. The marrow melts into the broth and gives it body that boneless beef cannot. - 2
Skim and simmer low
In the first fifteen minutes, gray foam will rise to the surface. Skim it off with a spoon and discard it. This is impurities from the bones and the meat. Once the broth runs clean, reduce the heat to the lowest setting that still holds a lazy bubble every few seconds. Cover partially and let it go for two hours. The shank is ready when the meat pulls away from the bone but has not yet fallen apart. You want it tender, not collapsed. The connective tissue needs time and patience to surrender.
- 3
Toast and blend the salsa de chile costeño
While the broth simmers, heat a dry comal or cast iron skillet over medium. Place the chile costeño on the comal and toast them, pressing down lightly with a spatula, for about 20 to 30 seconds per side. They should puff, blister, and turn a shade darker. The kitchen will smell sharp and bright, nothing like a guajillo, nothing like a pasilla. That is the costeño. Place the unpeeled garlic cloves on the comal alongside and let them char in spots, turning once, about five minutes total. Peel the garlic. Transfer the toasted chiles and garlic to a blender with a quarter cup of broth from the pot and a pinch of salt. Blend until smooth. Pour into a small bowl and set aside for the table.
Chile costeño is small and thin-skinned. It goes from toasted to burned in seconds. Stay at the comal. If one blackens, discard it. Burned costeño turns the salsa acrid and there is no coming back. - 4
Add the stubborn vegetables
After the beef has simmered for two hours, add the corn pieces and carrot rounds to the pot. These are the hardest vegetables in the caldo and they need the most time. Let them cook for twenty minutes at the same gentle simmer. The corn should be tender enough to bite through but still have some resistance. The carrots should yield to a knife but not fall apart. Taste the broth now and adjust the salt. The vegetables will absorb seasoning, so the broth needs to be a little more assertive than you think it should be.
- 5
Add the medium vegetables
Add the chayote quarters and calabacita half-moons. Simmer for another fifteen minutes. Chayote is dense and waxy. It should be translucent and soft all the way through when you test it with a knife. The calabacita cooks faster, so check it at ten minutes. If it is tender, leave it alone. Overcooked calabacita disintegrates into the broth and muddies the whole pot.
- 6
Add the soft vegetables and hierba santa
Add the cabbage wedges and ejotes. Cook for eight minutes. The cabbage should wilt and soften but keep its shape as a wedge, not dissolve into threads. In the last three to four minutes, tear the hierba santa leaves into large pieces, removing the tough center vein, and stir them into the broth. The leaves will darken and release their perfume almost immediately. You will smell anise, sassafras, something green and warm. That smell is Oaxaca. Do not boil the hierba santa. Do not cook it longer than five minutes. The aroma is volatile and a hard simmer kills it.
If you cannot find fresh hierba santa, dried leaves are sold in Mexican groceries, often labeled hoja santa. Use two dried leaves, crumbled, in place of four fresh ones. The flavor is less bright but still correct. Do not substitute epazote. They are different herbs that do different things. - 7
Serve at the table
Ladle the caldo into deep bowls, making sure each person gets a piece of shank on the bone, a round of corn, and a share of every vegetable. Place a torn piece of hierba santa in each bowl. Set the salsa de chile costeño, lime wedges, and warm tortillas at the table. In the Valles Centrales, a spoonful of white rice goes into the bottom of the bowl before the broth is ladled over it. That is how it is done. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
Chef Tips
- •The beef shank must be bone-in with the marrow intact. This is not negotiable. The marrow dissolves into the broth and gives it a richness and body that no boneless cut can replicate. Tell your butcher you want chambarete cortado en rodajas and do not let them remove a thing.
- •Hierba santa is not a garnish and it is not optional. It is the ingredient that makes this caldo Oaxacan. If you live outside Mexico, check Latin American markets or order dried hoja santa online. Mercado Benito Juarez in Oaxaca City sells it by the bundle for a few pesos. Preguntale a las señoras del mercado.
- •Chile costeño can be hard to find outside Oaxaca. If you cannot source it, chile de arbol is the closest substitute in terms of clean, direct heat, but you will lose the costeño's slightly fruity, smoky depth. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
- •In Oaxaca, many home cooks serve caldo de res with a mound of white rice in the bottom of the bowl. The broth soaks into the rice and becomes a meal within a meal. Try it before you dismiss it. It is not filler. It is tradition.
Advance Preparation
- •The beef broth with the shank and marrow bones can be made one day ahead and refrigerated. The fat will solidify on top overnight. Skim most of it off, but leave a thin layer for flavor. Reheat the broth, bring it to a simmer, and begin adding the vegetables fresh on serving day. The vegetables must not be cooked ahead or they turn to mush.
- •The salsa de chile costeño keeps refrigerated in a sealed jar for up to four days. The flavor sharpens as it sits.
- •For a weeknight meal, simmer the shank in a pressure cooker for 45 minutes at high pressure instead of two hours on the stove. The broth will not be as clear, but the meat will be tender and the marrow will still melt. Then proceed with the vegetable staging on the stovetop as written.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 580g)
Calories
355 calories
Total Fat
18 g
Saturated Fat
7 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
10 g
Cholesterol
85 mg
Sodium
730 mg
Total Carbohydrates
24 g
Dietary Fiber
5 g
Sugars
7 g
Protein
27 g
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