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Sinaloa's pinata-and-wedding pasta salad. Elbow macaroni, small Pacific shrimp, mayo, crema, and the brine from a can of pickled jalapenos. Always cold. Always next to the frijoles puercos.
This is from Sinaloa. The Pacific coast, where the shrimp comes off the boat by the kilo and where every birthday, every wedding, every quinceanera, every backyard pinata party has the same long folding table with the same two dishes: a pot of frijoles puercos and a wide cazuela of coditos con camaron. The two of them travel together. You will not find one without the other in Mazatlan, in Culiacan, in Los Mochis. That is the law.
The shrimp is camaron mediano, the small Pacific shrimp that Sinaloa fishes more of than any other state in Mexico. Big shrimp does not belong here. This is a salad of small bites where every spoonful catches a piece of pasta, a piece of shrimp, a chunk of jalapeno, a slice of olive. The dressing is mayonnaise, crema, and, the part nobody outside Sinaloa believes until they make it, a generous pour of the brine from a can of pickled jalapenos en escabeche. That brine is the whole dish. It carries the heat, the vinegar, the spices that pickled the chile and the carrot. Without it you have a sad American macaroni salad. With it you have something that tastes like a Mazatlan beach in July.
This is not a refined dish and it is not trying to be. It is party food, family-style, served in a glass cazuela big enough to feed twenty cousins. My notebook from a trip to Mazatlan in 2014 has a recipe from a senora named Dona Carmen who ran a stand near the malecon, written on a paper napkin. Her note in the corner: 'la salmuera no es opcional.' The brine is not optional. She was right. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Sinaloa.
Coditos con camaron emerged in the mid-20th century along Sinaloa's Pacific coast as commercial pasta production reached northern Mexico and refrigeration spread through home kitchens, allowing cold mayonnaise-based salads to become viable for outdoor parties in a hot climate. The dish reflects Sinaloa's identity as Mexico's largest shrimp-producing state, where camaron mediano is treated as a pantry ingredient rather than a luxury, and it shares a regional logic with other norteno cold salads like Sonora's ensalada de coditos con jamon. Its near-mandatory pairing with frijoles puercos, a creamy bean dip enriched with pork, chorizo, and chiles, is a fixed convention in Sinaloan party culture: the two dishes appear together at virtually every pinata, wedding, and bautizo across the state.
Quantity
1 pound
Quantity
1 pound
peeled and deveined
Quantity
1
Quantity
1/2, plus 1/2 cup finely diced for the salad
Quantity
2
smashed
Quantity
1 tablespoon, plus more for the pasta water
Quantity
1 1/2 cups
Quantity
1/2 cup
Quantity
1/3 cup
Quantity
1/2 cup
finely chopped, plus the carrots from the can, diced
Quantity
3
finely diced
Quantity
1/2
finely diced
Quantity
1 cup
thawed
Quantity
1/2 cup
sliced
Quantity
1 teaspoon
crumbled between your palms
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon
Quantity
juice of 1
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| elbow macaroni (coditos) | 1 pound |
| small raw shrimp (camaron mediano)peeled and deveined | 1 pound |
| bay leaf | 1 |
| white onion | 1/2, plus 1/2 cup finely diced for the salad |
| garlic clovessmashed | 2 |
| kosher salt | 1 tablespoon, plus more for the pasta water |
| Mexican mayonnaise (McCormick or Hellmann's con limon) | 1 1/2 cups |
| Mexican crema | 1/2 cup |
| brine from pickled jalapenos (escabeche liquid) | 1/3 cup |
| pickled jalapenos en escabechefinely chopped, plus the carrots from the can, diced | 1/2 cup |
| celery stalksfinely diced | 3 |
| red bell pepperfinely diced | 1/2 |
| frozen peasthawed | 1 cup |
| pitted green olivessliced | 1/2 cup |
| dried Mexican oreganocrumbled between your palms | 1 teaspoon |
| freshly ground black pepper | 1/2 teaspoon |
| Mexican lime | juice of 1 |
| saltine crackers (optional) | for serving |
| bottled hot sauce (Valentina or Tamazula) (optional) | for serving |
Bring 6 cups of water to a simmer with the half white onion, smashed garlic, bay leaf, and 1 tablespoon salt. Drop in the shrimp and cook for 90 seconds to 2 minutes, until they just turn pink and curl into a loose C. A tight O means you cooked them too long. Drain and spread them on a sheet pan to cool. Discard the aromatics. The shrimp must be small, camaron mediano from the Pacific. Big shrimp are wrong for this dish. Coditos con camaron is a salad of small bites.
Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Salt it generously, like the sea. Add the coditos and cook for one minute past the package time. Italians will tell you to keep pasta al dente. This is not Italian pasta. This is a Sinaloa salad and the pasta needs to be soft enough to absorb the dressing. Asi se hace y punto. Drain and rinse under cold water until completely cool. Shake out as much water as you can.
In the largest bowl you own, whisk together the mayonnaise, crema, jalapeno brine, oregano, black pepper, and lime juice. Taste it. It should be tangy, a little hot from the brine, creamy without being heavy. The brine is what makes this salad sinaloense. No me vengas con atajos: do not substitute pickle juice or vinegar. The escabeche carries the flavor of the chile, the carrot, and the spices that pickled them. That is the dressing's backbone.
Cut the cooled shrimp into thirds, or in half if they are very small. You want pieces small enough to ride on a single elbow of pasta. A big shrimp on top of a small piece of pasta is bad architecture. Coditos con camaron is built so that every spoonful gets a piece of everything.
Add the cooled coditos to the bowl with the dressing and fold gently. Add the chopped shrimp, the diced white onion, the chopped jalapenos and their carrots, the celery, the red bell pepper, the peas, and the olives. Fold until every piece of pasta is coated. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, ideally 4. Cold is part of the recipe. The salad needs time for the dressing to settle into the pasta and for the flavors to marry.
Cold pasta dulls salt. Pull the salad from the refrigerator, taste it, and correct. Almost always it needs another pinch of salt and a splash more brine. Pile it into a wide ceramic platter or a glass cazuela so the colors show: cream from the dressing, pink from the shrimp, green from the olives and peas, red from the pepper. Serve cold with saltines, Valentina, and a frosty Pacifico. At a Sinaloa party it goes on the table next to the frijoles puercos and the beer cooler. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.
1 serving (about 280g)
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