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The cold, creamy elbow pasta salad that sits on every central Mexican Christmas table, bound in crema and mayonesa, sharpened with pickled jalapeño brine, and built to feed a crowd from December 24th to January 6th.
Ensalada de coditos is from central Mexico. The kitchens of Ciudad de México, the Estado de México, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Querétaro. The states where the posada season runs from December 16th through Nochebuena, where the Christmas plate carries pavo, bacalao, romeritos, and somewhere on the side, always, the bowl of coditos. This is not Italian pasta salad. This is not American macaroni salad. This is its own thing and it belongs to the central Mexican holiday table.
The dressing tells you where you are. Crema mexicana, not sour cream. Mayonnaise, yes, but cut with three tablespoons of brine from a jar of jalapeños en escabeche. That brine is the whole point. Without it, you have a beige, sleepy salad. With it, you have something with edges: tangy, faintly hot, slightly vegetal from the carrots and onions that were pickled alongside the chiles. The ham, the corn, the panela, the bell pepper, those are negotiable. The brine is not.
My mother made this every December. She kept a Tupperware of it in the refrigerator from the 23rd through the first week of January, and the leftover bowl after Año Nuevo was somehow the best version, because by then the pasta had absorbed everything and the salad tasted like the whole holiday at once. She wrote in her notebook, in pencil: 'el jugo de los chiles, no se te olvide.' The juice from the chiles, don't forget. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Ensalada de coditos belongs to a category of 20th-century central Mexican dishes shaped by the post-revolutionary modernization of the urban kitchen, when industrial pasta from companies like La Moderna (founded in Toluca in 1920) and commercial mayonnaise became staples of middle-class households in Ciudad de México. The dish is often grouped with ensalada de manzana and ensalada de nochebuena as part of the canonical cena navideña of central Mexico, a holiday meal codified between the 1930s and 1960s as Mexican families adopted European-style cold composed salads and reworked them with Mexican ingredients: crema instead of cream, jalapeños en escabeche instead of plain pickles, panela instead of provolone. Its association with Christmas, posadas, and quinceañeras has nothing to do with the United States; this is a Mexican party food, not an imported one.
Quantity
1 pound (500 g)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
Quantity
1 cup
Quantity
1 cup
preferably McCormick or Hellmann's
Quantity
3 tablespoons
Quantity
1 teaspoon, plus more to taste
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon
Quantity
12 ounces (340 g)
cut into 1/2-inch dice
Quantity
1 cup
canned or fresh-cooked, drained
Quantity
1/2 cup
drained and chopped
Quantity
1/2 cup
diced
Quantity
1/2 medium
diced very small
Quantity
1/2
diced very small
Quantity
1 cup
cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Quantity
1/4 cup
chopped
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| dried codito pasta (elbow macaroni) | 1 pound (500 g) |
| kosher salt for the pasta water | 2 tablespoons |
| Mexican crema (crema acida) | 1 cup |
| mayonnaisepreferably McCormick or Hellmann's | 1 cup |
| brine from a jar of pickled jalapeños (escabeche) | 3 tablespoons |
| kosher salt | 1 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| freshly ground black pepper | 1/2 teaspoon |
| jamón de pierna (cooked ham)cut into 1/2-inch dice | 12 ounces (340 g) |
| corn kernelscanned or fresh-cooked, drained | 1 cup |
| pickled jalapeños en escabechedrained and chopped | 1/2 cup |
| pickled carrots from the escabeche jardiced | 1/2 cup |
| white oniondiced very small | 1/2 medium |
| red bell pepperdiced very small | 1/2 |
| queso panela or queso frescocut into 1/2-inch cubes | 1 cup |
| flat-leaf parsleychopped | 1/4 cup |
| saltine crackers (optional) | for serving |
Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Add the two tablespoons of salt. The water should taste like the sea. Add the coditos and stir so they do not stick. Cook until just past al dente, about one minute longer than the package says. This is not Italy. For ensalada de coditos, the pasta needs to be tender enough to absorb the dressing, not bouncy. Undercooked coditos will taste raw the next day no matter how much crema you add.
Drain the coditos and rinse them under cold running water until the pasta itself is cold to the touch. Shake the colander hard to drain every drop. Wet pasta will dilute the dressing and you will end up with a sad, weeping salad. Spread the drained pasta on a sheet pan and let it sit for ten minutes to dry out a little while you prep the rest.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the crema, mayonnaise, jalapeño brine, salt, and black pepper. The brine is the secret. It is what separates a Mexican ensalada de coditos from a gringo macaroni salad. Without it, the salad tastes flat. With it, you have something that belongs at a Mexican Christmas table. Taste the dressing now. It should be tangy, slightly hot, with the lactic edge of the crema underneath. Adjust with more brine or salt before the pasta goes in.
Add the cooled coditos to the bowl with the dressing. Fold gently with a rubber spatula until every piece is coated. Add the diced ham, corn, chopped pickled jalapeños, pickled carrots, white onion, and red bell pepper. Fold again, taking your time. You are not stirring. You are turning the salad over on itself so the dressing reaches everything without bruising the softer ingredients.
Add the cubed panela or queso fresco and fold in carefully. The cheese goes in last because it crumbles easily and you want recognizable cubes in the finished salad, not a paste. Scatter the chopped parsley over the top and fold once more, just to distribute.
Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least two hours, ideally four. This rest is not optional. The pasta drinks in the dressing, the brine works its way through, and the salad pulls itself together into one thing instead of a pile of ingredients. Taste again before serving. Cold dulls salt, so it almost always needs another pinch right before it goes to the table. Así se hace y punto.
Transfer to a serving bowl or leave it in the mixing bowl if you are at home. Garnish with a few more pickled jalapeño rings on top and a final dusting of parsley. Set saltines on the side. In central Mexico, this salad sits between the pavo navideño, the bacalao, and the romeritos. It is the cold counterpoint that every Christmas plate needs.
1 serving (about 230g)
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