Chef Lupita
Adobo de Puerco Poblano
Puebla's weekday adobo of pork shoulder braised in a thick guajillo and ancho sauce sharpened with vinegar, cumin, and clove. The deep red of a market spice stall, the dish a poblana cooks without thinking.
Culinary Explorer
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Espagueti Verde
Created by
Ciudad de Mexico's green spaghetti, built on charred poblano, crema, and cheese, the pasta plate every capitalino remembers from childhood birthday parties and Sunday lunches at the abuela's table.
Main Dishes
Mexican
Birthday
Comfort Food
Weeknight
20 min
Active Time
25 min cook•45 min total
Yield6 servings
Espagueti verde is from Ciudad de Mexico. Not from Italy, not from Puebla, from the kitchens of the capital, where Italian pasta arrived in the late 19th century and was promptly absorbed into the Mexican household. The capitalino home cook took the spaghetti, looked at what was in the cazuela, and said: this needs poblano.
The sauce is the dish. Charred chile poblano, crema, evaporated milk, queso crema, cilantro, parsley, onion, garlic. Nothing else. The poblano has to be roasted black on a flame, not steamed, not boiled. The char is what gives the sauce its smoke. The crema and the queso crema give it the silk. The evaporated milk is the secret nobody from Mexico City will tell you about, it is what makes the sauce coat the pasta the way it does in childhood memory.
This is birthday-party food. School-lunch food. The plate the abuela makes when the grandchildren come over and there is no time for mole. Every cumpleanos infantil in Colonia Roma, Coyoacan, or Iztapalapa has had a tray of espagueti verde next to the tinga de pollo and the gelatina. My mother made it on Sundays when we needed something fast and green and filling, and she always finished it with crumbled queso fresco at the table. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to the capital. Asi se hace y punto.
Pasta arrived in Mexico in significant volume during the late 19th-century Porfiriato, when Italian immigrants and French culinary influence reshaped middle-class urban dining in Ciudad de Mexico. The dish known as espagueti verde emerged in the early 20th century as part of the broader 'comida casera capitalina' tradition, alongside espagueti rojo (with a tomato and chile guajillo base) and espagueti blanco (with crema and queso). Its rise as a fixture of children's birthday parties coincided with the post-revolutionary expansion of the Mexican middle class in the 1940s and 1950s, when industrial dried pasta, canned evaporated milk from companies like Carnation and Nestle, and bottled crema became affordable household staples, embedding the dish into a generational memory shared by virtually every chilango born after 1950.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
fresh chile poblano
Quantity
4 large
dried spaghetti
Quantity
1 pound
kosher salt (for the pasta water)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
Mexican crema
Quantity
1 cup
whole milk evaporada (evaporated milk)
Quantity
1 cup
queso crema (Mexican-style cream cheese)
Quantity
4 ounces
at room temperature
fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems
Quantity
1/2 cup, packed
flat-leaf parsley leaves
Quantity
1/2 cup, packed
white onion
Quantity
1/2 medium
roughly chopped
garlic cloves
Quantity
2
kosher salt
Quantity
1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste
unsalted butter
Quantity
3 tablespoons
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
1 tablespoon
queso fresco
Quantity
1 cup
crumbled, for serving
queso Cotija
Quantity
1/2 cup
finely grated, for serving
sliced avocado (optional)
Quantity
for serving
fresh cilantro leaves (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| fresh chile poblano | 4 large |
| dried spaghetti | 1 pound |
| kosher salt (for the pasta water) | 2 tablespoons |
| Mexican crema | 1 cup |
| whole milk evaporada (evaporated milk) | 1 cup |
| queso crema (Mexican-style cream cheese)at room temperature | 4 ounces |
| fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems | 1/2 cup, packed |
| flat-leaf parsley leaves | 1/2 cup, packed |
| white onionroughly chopped | 1/2 medium |
| garlic cloves | 2 |
| kosher salt | 1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste |
| unsalted butter | 3 tablespoons |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard) | 1 tablespoon |
| queso frescocrumbled, for serving | 1 cup |
| queso Cotijafinely grated, for serving | 1/2 cup |
| sliced avocado (optional) | for serving |
| fresh cilantro leaves (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Gas burner or comal for roasting the chiles
- •High-powered blender
- •Wide heavy skillet or clay cazuela, at least 12 inches
- •Large stockpot for boiling pasta
- •Tongs and a wooden spoon
Instructions
- 1
Roast the poblanos
Set the poblanos directly over an open gas flame on medium-high. Turn them with tongs every minute or so. The skins should blacken and blister across every surface, not just brown. This takes about eight minutes per chile. If you have an electric stove, do them on a comal over high heat or under the broiler. The char is not optional. The smoke that goes into the flesh is half the flavor of this dish.
Pick poblanos that are dark green, firm, and shiny. The flat, wide ones roast more evenly than the small twisted ones. Pregunta al verdulero del mercado for the freshest batch. - 2
Sweat and peel
Drop the blackened chiles into a plastic bag or a covered bowl. Let them sit for ten minutes. The trapped heat loosens the skin from the flesh. Pull off the charred skin with your fingers, do not rinse them under water. Water washes away the smoke you worked for. Tear each chile open, pull out the stem, the seeds, and the white veins. Some cooks leave a few seeds in for heat. That is your decision.
- 3
Build the green sauce
Place the peeled poblanos in the blender with the crema, evaporated milk, queso crema, cilantro, parsley, onion, garlic, and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Blend on high for a full minute, until the sauce is completely smooth and a deep, even green. No flecks. No chunks. The color should be the green of a freshly painted Coyoacan wall. Taste for salt. The sauce needs to be assertive because the pasta will mute it.
The parsley is not a substitute for cilantro. It brightens the green and keeps the sauce from going gray when it heats. Both herbs together is how the cooks in Colonia Roma have done it for fifty years. - 4
Cook the pasta
Bring a large pot of water to a hard boil. Add 2 tablespoons of salt. The water should taste like the Gulf of Mexico. Add the spaghetti and cook until just shy of al dente, two minutes less than the package time. The pasta finishes cooking in the sauce. Reserve one cup of the pasta water before draining. Do not rinse the pasta. The starch on the surface is what helps the sauce cling.
- 5
Toast the sauce
In a wide, heavy skillet or a clay cazuela, melt the butter with the lard over medium heat. La manteca da el sabor de fondo, the butter da la cremosidad. When the foam settles, pour in the green sauce. It will sputter. Cook it for five to seven minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the sauce darkens slightly, the raw onion smell is gone, and a thin film of butter rises to the edges. This step is the difference between a sauce that tastes like a smoothie and a sauce that tastes cooked. No me vengas con atajos.
Keep the heat at medium. If the sauce boils hard, the crema breaks and you get grainy curds. A steady simmer is what you want. - 6
Marry pasta and sauce
Drop the drained spaghetti into the sauce. Use tongs to lift and turn the strands until every one is coated in green. If the sauce feels tight, add a splash of the reserved pasta water, a few tablespoons at a time, until it loosens to a silky, clinging consistency. The pasta should be glossy, not soupy. Cook one more minute on low heat so the spaghetti finishes its cooking inside the sauce and pulls in the flavor.
- 7
Finish and serve
Pull the pan off the heat. Pile the spaghetti into a warm serving platter or straight from the cazuela onto plates. Scatter the crumbled queso fresco generously across the top, then a finer dusting of grated Cotija. Add a few cilantro leaves and a fan of avocado on the side if it is in season. Serve at the table, family-style. Every capitalino over thirty has eaten this from a paper plate at a birthday party. Serve it the same way. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Chef Tips
- •Roast the poblanos over an open flame whenever possible. The broiler works, the comal works, but the gas burner gives the deepest smoke. If your poblanos are mild this season, leave a few seeds in the sauce. If they are picosos, take every seed out. The chile dictates, not the recipe.
- •Mexican crema is not sour cream. It is thinner, less tangy, and behaves differently when heated. If you cannot find it, mix creme fraiche with a splash of whole milk. American sour cream will curdle and ruin the sauce. That is a compromise too far.
- •The evaporated milk is non-negotiable in the capitalino version. It is what gives the sauce body without making it heavy. Do not substitute heavy cream, the sauce will turn into a wall.
- •This is not a dish that waits. Once the pasta is in the sauce, serve it within ten minutes. Espagueti verde left to sit absorbs the sauce and turns into a green brick. If you must hold it, keep the sauce and pasta separate until the last minute.
Advance Preparation
- •The poblanos can be roasted and peeled one day ahead and stored in the refrigerator wrapped in a damp cloth.
- •The green sauce can be blended up to one day ahead and refrigerated. Do not toast it in butter until you are ready to serve, the cooked sauce loses its brightness if it sits overnight.
- •The finished pasta does not hold well. Cook and serve in the same hour. Leftovers are edible but the texture suffers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 290g)
Calories
705 calories
Total Fat
38 g
Saturated Fat
21 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
14 g
Cholesterol
100 mg
Sodium
1180 mg
Total Carbohydrates
65 g
Dietary Fiber
3 g
Sugars
8 g
Protein
22 g
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