Chef Lupita
Coditos con Camaron Sinaloenses
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.
Culinary Explorer
A cooking platform built around craft, culture, and the stories behind what we eat.
Ensalada de Verdolagas Tarahumara
Created by
The Sierra Tarahumara's Raramuri salad of wild purslane, dressed with lime, salt, chiltepin, and tomato. Pre-Hispanic cooking that needs nothing else and tolerates no improvement.
Salads
Mexican
Weeknight
Quick Meal
Budget Friendly
15 min
Active Time
0 min cook•15 min total
Yield4 servings
This is from Chihuahua. Specifically the Sierra Tarahumara, the canyon country in the southwest of the state where the Raramuri people have eaten verdolagas for as long as anyone has been keeping track. Verdolagas, purslane, are not a foraged novelty here. They are food. They grow wild between the rows of corn in a milpa, they sprout in the cracks of stone walls, and the women gather them in the morning when the leaves are still cool.
The dish is what it is: torn verdolagas, lime, salt, chiltepin, tomato, onion. That is the recipe. There is no oil. There is no vinegar. The verdolaga leaf is already lemony, already succulent, already carrying its own slight sour edge from the malic acid in the flesh. To dress it heavily is to bury what makes it worth eating. The Raramuri understood this thousands of years before any of us showed up with our salad spinners.
The chiltepin is non-negotiable if you can get it. The little round wild chile that grows across the Sierra is sharp, clean, and gone in one second. Sonora declared it cultural heritage in 2009 and Chihuahua's mountain cooks would tell you the recognition was overdue. If your only option is chile serrano, use it and know what you are missing. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
My mother did not cook from Chihuahua. She was Jalisciense and the verdolagas she knew were stewed with pork and salsa verde, the central Mexican way. The first time I ate verdolagas the Tarahumara way was in a kitchen in Creel, served by a woman who had picked the greens that morning. She watched me chew. She said, in Spanish, that the city had taught me to expect more on a plate than the plate needed. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Verdolagas (Portulaca oleracea) are among the oldest cultivated and gathered greens in the Americas, with archaeological evidence of their use in central Mexico dating back at least 7,000 years; they are also one of the few plants that travel as both a wild food and a kitchen ingredient across pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the Mediterranean, and Asia, having spread independently in each region. The Raramuri (also called Tarahumara) of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Chihuahua incorporate verdolagas into a daily diet still anchored in the pre-Hispanic triad of corn, beans, and squash, and the chile chiltepin (Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum) that seasons this salad is the wild progenitor of every domesticated chile in the world. Sonora formally declared the chiltepin part of its cultural and gastronomic heritage in 2009, recognizing both its ecological role and its place in Sierra cooking shared across the Sonora-Chihuahua border.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
fresh verdolagas (purslane)
Quantity
1 pound
thick stems trimmed, leaves and tender stems left whole
ripe tomatoes
Quantity
2 medium
cored and diced into 1/2-inch pieces
white onion
Quantity
1/2 small
finely diced
fresh chile serrano or dried chiltepin
Quantity
1 to 2 serrano, or 6 to 10 chiltepin
serrano finely chopped, chiltepin crushed between your fingers
fresh lime juice
Quantity
3 tablespoons (about 2 Mexican limones)
coarse sea salt
Quantity
1 teaspoon, plus more to taste
fresh cilantro leaves (optional)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
roughly torn
avocado (optional)
Quantity
1 small
diced
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| fresh verdolagas (purslane)thick stems trimmed, leaves and tender stems left whole | 1 pound |
| ripe tomatoescored and diced into 1/2-inch pieces | 2 medium |
| white onionfinely diced | 1/2 small |
| fresh chile serrano or dried chiltepinserrano finely chopped, chiltepin crushed between your fingers | 1 to 2 serrano, or 6 to 10 chiltepin |
| fresh lime juice | 3 tablespoons (about 2 Mexican limones) |
| coarse sea salt | 1 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| fresh cilantro leaves (optional)roughly torn | 2 tablespoons |
| avocado (optional)diced | 1 small |
Equipment Needed
- •Wide ceramic or wooden serving bowl
- •Large bowl for washing the greens
- •Colander
- •Small wooden chiltepinero or mortar for crushing the chiltepin
Instructions
- 1
Wash the verdolagas
Verdolagas grow low to the ground and they hold dirt in the leaf joints. Fill a large bowl with cold water and submerge the purslane. Swish with your hands. Lift the greens out into a colander, leaving the grit at the bottom. Refill the bowl and do it again. Twice is the minimum. Three times if your verdolagas came from a milpa instead of a market.
Do not skip the second wash. Sand in a salad ruins it and there is no rescuing the dish once it is dressed. - 2
Trim and tear
Snap off the thick lower stems where they feel woody. Keep the small tender stems and the round fleshy leaves. Tear any large sprigs into bite-sized pieces with your hands. A knife bruises purslane and turns the cut edges dark. Hands respect the leaf.
- 3
Crush the chiltepin
If you are using chiltepin, the small wild chile that grows across the Sierra and that Sonora declared cultural heritage in 2009, crush the dried berries between your fingers or in a small wooden chiltepinero. Six berries is a polite seasoning. Ten is how the Raramuri season it. The chiltepin is sharp and clean, hot for one second and gone, not the lingering burn of a habanero. If you cannot find chiltepin, use fresh chile serrano. It is a compromise, not a substitute.
- 4
Combine in a wide bowl
In a wide ceramic or wooden bowl, combine the torn verdolagas, diced tomato, white onion, and the crushed chiltepin or chopped serrano. Toss gently with your hands. The verdolagas have a natural lemony succulence, almost like a thicker spinach with a clean sour note. That flavor is the dish. Everything else supports it.
- 5
Dress with lime and salt
Squeeze the lime juice over the bowl and scatter the salt across the surface. Toss again with your hands. Taste. Adjust the salt up if the verdolagas need it, and they almost always do because the lemony flesh of the leaf takes salt well. No olive oil. No vinegar. No sugar. Asi se hace y punto.
- 6
Finish and serve immediately
Scatter the torn cilantro and the diced avocado over the top if you are using them. Serve right away in the same bowl, family-style, with warm corn tortillas or sobaqueras on the side if you have them. Verdolagas wilt under salt and lime within twenty minutes. Dress only what you will eat.
Chef Tips
- •Verdolagas are sold at Mexican mercados in the spring and summer, usually in big loose bunches, sometimes still with dirt clinging to the roots. If you do not see them, ask. Many vendors keep them behind the counter because the leaves are delicate and crush easily.
- •Do not buy purslane that looks limp or yellow at the leaf tips. Fresh verdolagas have plump, almost succulent leaves that snap when you bend a stem. If they bend like wet paper, they are too old.
- •The chiltepin is worth seeking out. Sonoran and Chihuahuan grocers carry small jars of the dried whole chiles. They keep for a year in a sealed jar and they go on everything: beans, eggs, fruit, this salad. Buy more than you think you need.
- •If you have access to a milpa or a garden where purslane grows wild, pick it in the morning before the sun pulls the moisture out of the leaves. That is when it is best. Preguntale a las senoras del mercado, they will tell you the same thing.
Advance Preparation
- •The verdolagas can be washed and trimmed up to four hours ahead and kept wrapped in a damp cloth in the refrigerator. Do not dress until serving.
- •The tomato and onion can be diced one hour ahead and held at room temperature.
- •Once dressed with lime and salt, the salad must be eaten within twenty minutes. The leaves wilt and weep and the texture is lost.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 240g)
Calories
105 calories
Total Fat
6 g
Saturated Fat
1 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
5 g
Cholesterol
0 mg
Sodium
580 mg
Total Carbohydrates
12 g
Dietary Fiber
4 g
Sugars
3 g
Protein
4 g
Where cooking meets culture.
Culinary guides, cultural storytelling, and the editorial depth that makes cooking meaningful.
Discover Culinary ExplorerMore from Noroeste Salads
Browse the full collection
Chef Lupita
Ensalada Cesar Original de Tijuana
Tijuana's 1924 original from Caesar Cardini, whole romaine hearts dressed tableside with coddled egg, Mexican lime, Worcestershire, garlic, and Parmigiano. No anchovies. Eaten with the hands, leaf by leaf.
Chef Lupita
Ensalada China Mexicalense
Mexicali's Chinese-Mexican slaw from a century of border kitchens. Crisp shredded cabbage and carrot in a sweet-sour rice vinegar and soy dressing, served cold with blistered chiles toreados.
Chef Lupita
Ensalada de Atún Sinaloense
Sinaloa's pantry salad of canned tuna, peas, white onion, and tomato bound with mayonnaise and the brine from a jar of pickled jalapeños. Eaten on saltines or stuffed into a bolillo, the way the coast has done it for generations.