Chef Lupita
Agua de Chilacayota
Oaxaca's market agua fresca built on chilacayota squash, piloncillo, and Mexican canela, served cold with the spaghetti-like strands of squash and toasted seeds floating in the glass.
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Mezcal Espadin con Sal de Gusano y Naranja
Created by
The traditional Oaxacan service of mezcal espadin: small sips from a clay veladora, half-moons of orange, and a mound of sal de gusano. Besitos, never shots. The salt-citrus-smoke triangle that has framed Oaxacan tables for generations.
Beverages
Mexican
Special Occasion
Dinner Party
10 min
Active Time
0 min cook•10 min total
Yield4 servings
This is Oaxaca. Specifically the Valles Centrales, where the agave espadin grows in long fields below the cerros and where every village from Santiago Matatlan to San Dionisio Ocotepec has a palenque, a family distillery built around an underground earth oven and a wooden tahona. Mezcal is not a flavor. Mezcal is a place.
The service matters as much as the bottle. Mezcal espadin is sipped from a veladora, the small wide-mouthed clay or glass cup, or from a jicara, the dried gourd. Never a shot glass. Never on ice. Never with lime and salt the way they serve tequila to tourists in Cancun. Oaxacans drink mezcal with naranja and sal de gusano, the worm salt made from toasted ground gusano de maguey, sea salt, and chile costeno. The orange brightens, the salt grounds the smoke, the mezcal carries the agave. Three ingredients, one triangle, and the drink lives inside it.
My mother did not drink mezcal. She was from Jalisco and her people drank tequila. I learned mezcal sitting at the long wooden tables of a palenque in Matatlan, with a maestro mezcalero who poured me a veladora at ten in the morning and told me to take a small sip, hold it, and wait. Besitos, he said. Pequenos. The mezcal will tell you what it is if you let it. That is the lesson. The drink is slow because the agave is slow. Eight years in the field, three days in the oven, weeks of fermentation, two distillations. You do not throw that back. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Oaxaca's drink belongs at this pace.
Mezcal predates tequila by centuries and is descended from a pre-Columbian practice of roasting agave hearts in earth ovens, a tradition documented among the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples of what is now Oaxaca well before Spanish contact. The distillation step, requiring copper or clay stills, arrived after the conquest in the 16th century, but the underground roasting and the wood-fired smoke are indigenous. Sal de gusano itself is rooted in the pre-Hispanic use of the gusano de maguey, the chinicuil and meocuil larvae that infest the agave plant, as a protein source; toasting and grinding the larva with chile and salt turned a pest into a condiment, and pairing it with mezcal closed the loop between the agave plant and the people who lived among it. The 1994 Denomination of Origin for mezcal initially restricted the name to a handful of states, with Oaxaca producing the overwhelming majority of certified mezcal to this day.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
mezcal espadin joven
Quantity
12 ounces
100 percent agave, from a Oaxacan palenque
Valencia oranges
Quantity
2 medium
washed and dried
sal de gusano (Oaxacan worm salt)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
fresh chile de agua or chile serrano (optional)
Quantity
1
thinly sliced
flaky sea salt (optional)
Quantity
for the rim of the orange
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| mezcal espadin joven100 percent agave, from a Oaxacan palenque | 12 ounces |
| Valencia orangeswashed and dried | 2 medium |
| sal de gusano (Oaxacan worm salt) | 2 tablespoons |
| fresh chile de agua or chile serrano (optional)thinly sliced | 1 |
| flaky sea salt (optional) | for the rim of the orange |
Equipment Needed
- •Small clay or glass veladoras (Oaxacan wide-mouth cups), one per drinker
- •Jicaras (dried gourd cups) as an alternative
- •Small barro plate for the orange slices
- •Small clay dish or saucer for the sal de gusano
- •Sharp paring knife for the oranges
Instructions
- 1
Choose the mezcal
Buy a mezcal espadin joven from a small Oaxacan palenque. Read the back of the bottle. It should name the maestro mezcalero, the village, and the agave. If the label says nothing, the bottle says nothing. The Valles Centrales of Oaxaca, Santiago Matatlan, San Dionisio Ocotepec, Tlacolula, are where espadin lives. No me vengas con atajos. Industrial mezcal is not what you are drinking tonight.
Espadin is the most common agave for mezcal because it matures in seven or eight years. Tobala, tepeztate, madrecuixe are wild and slower, and they belong to other glasses on other nights. Tonight is espadin. - 2
Slice the oranges
Slice the oranges into rounds about a quarter inch thick, then halve each round into half-moons. Pick the slices with the brightest pith. The orange is not a chaser. It is part of the drink. The acid and the sweetness frame the smoke and let the agave come through clean. Lay the half-moons on a small barro plate. No fanning, no twisting. The mercado does not plate.
- 3
Set out the sal de gusano
Place the sal de gusano in a small clay dish or on a flat saucer in a low mound. Sal de gusano is a Oaxacan condiment of toasted ground gusano de maguey, the larva that lives in the agave plant, mixed with sea salt and chile costeno. The color should be a dusty brick red. If yours looks pale pink and tastes only of salt, you bought a tourist version. The real one carries chile heat, smoked depth, and a faint earthiness that the agave answers back. Asi se hace y punto.
Sal de gusano keeps for months in a sealed jar in a cool dark cupboard. Light and humidity dull the chile. Buy it from a Oaxacan vendor or a serious mercado, never from a souvenir shop. - 4
Pour into veladoras or jicaras
Pour three ounces of mezcal into each veladora, the small Oaxacan glass shaped like a wide votive cup, or into a jicara, the dried gourd cup. The wide mouth lets the smoke open. A shot glass kills the drink before it starts. Mezcal is for the nose first, the lip second, the throat third. Pour at room temperature. Never on ice.
- 5
Serve and instruct the table
Set the veladoras at the center of the table with the orange slices and the sal de gusano between them. Tell your guests how it goes: a small sip of mezcal, held on the tongue for a second so the agave shows itself, then a half-moon of orange dipped in the sal de gusano, bitten and chewed slowly. Then another sip. The Oaxacans call these small sips besitos, little kisses. This is not a shot. Anyone who throws back a mezcal at this table loses the next round. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and saber tomar mezcal too.
- 6
Read the mezcal
On the first sip, look for the agave: green, vegetal, almost like a roasted artichoke heart. Then the smoke from the underground earth oven where the pinas were cooked over wood. Then the minerality, faint and stony. The orange and salt do not cover the mezcal. They draw it forward. If you taste alcohol burn and nothing else, you are drinking too fast or the mezcal is industrial. A good espadin warms the chest, never burns the throat.
Chef Tips
- •Read the bottle. A serious mezcal espadin will list the maestro mezcalero by name, the village, the agave species, the alcohol content (usually 45 to 48 percent for a traditional bottling), and the batch size. If the label is silent on these, the mezcal is industrial and the smoke flavor is added, not earned.
- •Sal de gusano is not a substitute for table salt and table salt is not a substitute for sal de gusano. If you cannot find the real thing, leave it off the table. A bad fake of sal de gusano, the pink-dyed tourist version, is worse than nothing. Buy from a Oaxacan importer or a mercado that knows what it is selling.
- •Mezcal espadin is the right starting point. Tobala, tepeztate, madrecuixe, arroqueno, these wild agave mezcales are extraordinary but they cost three to five times as much and they reward a palate that already knows espadin. Walk before you run. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo, and so is learning mezcal.
- •Never refrigerate mezcal and never serve it cold. The cold mutes the agave and tightens the smoke. Room temperature, room glass, room pace.
Advance Preparation
- •Sal de gusano keeps for several months in a sealed jar away from light and humidity. Buy it once from a serious source and you are set for many tables.
- •Mezcal does not improve in the bottle the way wine does, but a good bottle holds for years if kept upright in a cool dark place. Once opened, drink it within six months for the brightest agave character.
- •Slice the oranges only at serving time. Cut oranges held more than an hour go bitter at the pith and lose the brightness that frames the mezcal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 150g)
Calories
230 calories
Total Fat
0 g
Saturated Fat
0 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
0 g
Cholesterol
0 mg
Sodium
1500 mg
Total Carbohydrates
7 g
Dietary Fiber
1 g
Sugars
6 g
Protein
1 g
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