A cooking platform built around craft, culture, and the stories behind what we eat.
Created by
Veracruz home cooking at its most honest: corn tortillas softened in lard, passed through a jitomate salsa lit up with wild chiltepin, rolled around shredded chicken, and crowned with crema, queso fresco, and raw onion rings.
These enchiladas are from Veracruz, the Gulf coast, where the salsa starts with jitomate and not with a paste of dried chiles. Understand that first. In the central highlands they build enchiladas on guajillo, ancho, and mulato, the dark chiles ground into a thick paste. Veracruz does not cook that way. Here the red comes from ripe tomato, onion, and garlic, and the heat comes from one small wild chile. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
That chile is the chiltepin, the tiny round chile that grows wild across the Gulf and the Huasteca. It is fierce and it is fast, a sharp heat that arrives and leaves, nothing like the slow burn of a dried chile paste. You toast it for a few seconds, blend it into the charred tomato, and fry that salsa in manteca de cerdo until it darkens and loses its raw edge. Then you pass each tortilla through hot lard to soften it, dip it in the warm salsa, and roll it around shredded chicken. La manteca es el sabor. Warm a tortilla dry and it tears the second you fold it. Pass it through lard and it rolls like cloth.
What goes on top tells you where you are. Crema, queso fresco, and raw white onion rings. The dairy came with the Spanish, the tortilla and the chile were already here, and the port of Veracruz is where all of it met. This is La Tercera Raiz on one plate: Indigenous, Spanish, African. I learned this version from a senora in Tlacotalpan who sold them three at a time off a folding table near the river, her crema in a recycled jar, her onion sliced so thin it was almost transparent. She told me the secret was to fry the salsa longer than you think you should. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
The port of Veracruz was the principal gateway of New Spain for three centuries, which is why the state's cooking carries the heaviest Spanish and African imprint in the country, the convergence Mexicans call La Tercera Raiz, the third root. The tomato at the base of this salsa is indigenous to Mesoamerica, its name descending from the Nahuatl 'xitomatl,' while the crema and queso fresco arrived with Spanish cattle. The chiltepin is regarded by botanists as the wild ancestor of all domesticated Capsicum annuum chiles, the mother chile from which the guajillos, anchos, and jalapenos were later cultivated. The word 'enchilada' comes from 'enchilar,' to coat or season with chile, describing a practice Mesoamerican peoples followed long before the Spanish arrived.
Quantity
1 1/2 pounds
or a mix of breast and thigh
Quantity
1/2
Quantity
1/2
sliced into very thin rings
Quantity
4
2 for the chicken, 2 for the salsa (left unpeeled to roast)
Quantity
1
Quantity
2 pounds
about 8 to 10
Quantity
1/2
quartered
Quantity
4 to 6
plus more for serving
Quantity
2 tablespoons
Quantity
1/3 cup
Quantity
12
Quantity
1/2 cup
Quantity
1 cup
crumbled
Quantity
to taste
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| bone-in, skin-on chicken breastor a mix of breast and thigh | 1 1/2 pounds |
| white onion (for poaching) | 1/2 |
| white onion (for serving)sliced into very thin rings | 1/2 |
| garlic cloves2 for the chicken, 2 for the salsa (left unpeeled to roast) | 4 |
| bay leaf | 1 |
| ripe jitomate (Roma or saladet tomatoes)about 8 to 10 | 2 pounds |
| white onionquartered | 1/2 |
| dried chiltepinplus more for serving | 4 to 6 |
| lard (manteca de cerdo) for the salsa | 2 tablespoons |
| lard (manteca de cerdo) for the tortillas | 1/3 cup |
| corn tortillas | 12 |
| Mexican crema | 1/2 cup |
| queso frescocrumbled | 1 cup |
| kosher salt | to taste |
| frijoles negros de la olla (optional) | for serving |
| whole dried chiltepin (optional) | for serving |
Put the chicken in a pot with the half onion, 2 garlic cloves, the bay leaf, and a teaspoon of salt. Cover with cold water by an inch and bring to a gentle simmer. Skim the gray foam in the first ten minutes. Cook at a low simmer for 20 to 25 minutes, until the chicken is just cooked through. Do not let it boil hard or the meat goes dry and stringy. Let it cool in the broth for ten minutes, then pull it out and shred it with your hands or two forks. Keep the broth. You will use a little to loosen the salsa.
Heat a dry comal or heavy skillet over medium-high. Lay the whole jitomate, the quartered onion, and the 2 unpeeled garlic cloves on it. Turn them as they color. The tomato skins should blacken in patches and the flesh should go soft all the way through, about 10 minutes. Pull the garlic earlier, the moment it gives under pressure, and peel it. This char is where the salsa gets its depth. Roasting, not boiling, is what separates a Veracruz salsa from a pot of watery tomato.
Lower the heat under the comal. Toast the chiltepin for just a few seconds, moving them the whole time. They are tiny and they go from toasted to burned in a breath. The moment they smell sharp and nutty, take them off. Burned chile turns the whole salsa bitter and there is no fixing it later.
Put the charred tomatoes, skins and all, the roasted onion, the peeled garlic, and the toasted chiltepin in the blender with a teaspoon of salt and about 1/4 cup of the chicken broth. Blend until smooth. Start with four chiltepin. You can always blend in more, but you cannot take the heat back out once it is in. Taste with respect, because the chiltepin keeps building after the first sip.
Heat the 2 tablespoons of lard in a wide cazuela or deep skillet over medium-high until it shimmers. Pour in the blended salsa all at once and stand back, because it will sputter. Lower to medium and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring often, until the salsa darkens to a deep brick red, thickens, and a spoon dragged across the bottom leaves a clean trail for a second before it closes. This is the step people skip. No me vengas con atajos. Raw blended tomato tastes flat. Fried salsa tastes like Veracruz. Keep it warm and pourable, and thin it with a splash of broth if it tightens up too much.
Warm the shredded chicken with a couple of spoonfuls of the salsa and a pinch of salt, and keep it hot. In a separate small skillet, heat the 1/3 cup of lard over medium. Pass each tortilla through the hot lard for three or four seconds a side, just until it turns soft and bends without cracking, then lift it out and let the excess drip back into the pan. You are softening the tortilla, not frying it crisp. La manteca es el sabor, and it is also what keeps the tortilla from tearing when you roll it. A tortilla warmed dry in the microwave splits the moment you fold it.
Working one at a time, lay a softened tortilla into the warm salsa and turn it so both sides are coated. Move it to a plate, lay a line of shredded chicken down the center, and roll it closed. Set it seam-side down so it stays shut. Three to a plate is the Veracruz portion. Once the plate is full, spoon more warm salsa over the top until the enchiladas are well bathed.
Drizzle the crema over the enchiladas in ribbons. Scatter the crumbled queso fresco and lay the thin raw onion rings on top. Serve right away with frijoles negros de la olla on the side, black beans, the way Veracruz does it, never pinto. Enchiladas wait for nobody. Let them sit too long and the tortilla drinks the salsa and turns to paste. Eat them now. Asi se hace y punto.
1 serving (about 420g)
Culinary guides, cultural storytelling, and the editorial depth that makes cooking meaningful.
Discover Culinary Explorer
Chef Lupita
Northern Veracruz's enchiladas de cacahuate: toasted peanut and dried chile cascabel ground into a sauce as smooth as any mole, folded into warm corn tortillas and set beside seared cecina and a bowl of black beans cooked with epazote.
Chef Lupita
The Huasteca veracruzana's empepianadas: corn tortillas dipped and folded under a green sauce of ground toasted pepitas and chile serrano, finished with crumbled queso fresco and raw onion. Cecina on the side, the way they eat it up north.
Chef Lupita
From the green, humid Huasteca where Veracruz climbs north into San Luis Potosí, corn tortillas bathed in toasted chile cascabel and jitomate salsa, layered with salt-cured cecina, black beans from the pot, and crumbled queso fresco.
Chef Lupita
Northern Veracruz crushes its tortillas open on the comal and calls them estrujadas: torn ridges built to catch a cascabel-and-peanut salsa, dark cecina off the asador, refried black beans, queso fresco, and cool avocado.