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Mexico City's guajillo-soaked street bread, fried on the plancha and stuffed with papa con chorizo, lettuce, crema, and queso fresco. A pure red mess that runs down your wrists and ruins your shirt, exactly the way it should.
This is a Ciudad de México dish. Specifically a street food, sold from the antojitos stalls and tianguis stands of colonias like Doctores, Centro, and Roma, where the cook stands behind a plancha pulling rolls in and out of a wide tray of guajillo salsa all night. You eat them standing up, in two hands, with napkins you will need three of.
The bread is pambazo, a soft round roll dense enough to survive being dipped in chile salsa and fried in lard without falling apart. If your bakery does not make pambazos, use teleras and accept that you are working with a more delicate bread. Bolillos are too crusty. Hamburger buns are an insult. Find pambazo bread or find a different recipe.
The filling is papa con chorizo, potato and Mexican chorizo, the kind of working-class filling that has fed Mexico City for generations because it is cheap, filling, and good. Waxy potato, not russet. Real Mexican chorizo, the kind that releases red-orange fat when you cook it, not Spanish chorizo and not breakfast sausage. These are not the same product and they are not interchangeable.
My mother did not make pambazos. They were not from Jalisco. She bought them on Sundays from a woman on Calle de Durango who set up a plancha on the sidewalk at four in the afternoon and worked until midnight. I would walk home with two of them wrapped in butcher paper, the red salsa already bleeding through. That woman did not have a recipe written down. She had her hands and her plancha and forty years of doing it the same way. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Pambazo bread takes its name from the colonial-era Spanish phrase 'pan basso' or 'pan bajo,' meaning low-quality bread, the cheaper second-tier loaf sold to the working classes in 18th and 19th century Mexico. The dish in its modern Mexico City form, with the bread submerged in guajillo salsa and griddled on the plancha, took shape in the late 19th and early 20th centuries alongside the rise of antojitos street food culture in the colonias around the historic center. A separate pambazo tradition exists in Veracruz, where the bread is left undipped and filled with picadillo, demonstrating once again that Mexico does not have one cuisine and that what 'pambazo' means depends entirely on which state you are standing in.
Quantity
6
or telera rolls if pambazo bread is unavailable
Quantity
10
stemmed and seeded
Quantity
2
stemmed and seeded
Quantity
3
peeled
Quantity
1/4 medium
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
1/4 teaspoon
Quantity
2
Quantity
1 teaspoon, plus more to taste
Quantity
2 cups
hot but not boiling
Quantity
1 pound
peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Quantity
12 ounces
casings removed
Quantity
3 tablespoons, plus more for frying
Quantity
2 cups
finely sliced
Quantity
1 cup
Quantity
1 cup
crumbled
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| pambazo rollsor telera rolls if pambazo bread is unavailable | 6 |
| dried chile guajillostemmed and seeded | 10 |
| dried chile anchostemmed and seeded | 2 |
| garlic clovespeeled | 3 |
| white onion | 1/4 medium |
| dried Mexican oregano | 1 teaspoon |
| ground cumin | 1/4 teaspoon |
| whole cloves | 2 |
| kosher salt | 1 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| hot waterhot but not boiling | 2 cups |
| waxy potatoes (Yukon Gold or red)peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes | 1 pound |
| fresh Mexican chorizocasings removed | 12 ounces |
| lard (manteca de cerdo) | 3 tablespoons, plus more for frying |
| shredded lettucefinely sliced | 2 cups |
| Mexican crema | 1 cup |
| queso frescocrumbled | 1 cup |
| salsa verde (optional) | for serving |
| pickled jalapenos (optional) | for serving |
Put the cubed potatoes in a small pot, cover with cold salted water, and bring to a simmer. Cook 8 to 10 minutes, until a fork slides through without resistance but the cubes still hold their shape. Drain and set aside. You do not want them falling apart. The papa con chorizo should have texture, not be mashed.
Heat a dry comal over medium. Toast the guajillo and ancho separately, 20 to 30 seconds per side. They should puff slightly and smell like the inside of a chile vendor's stall at La Merced. Do not blacken them. Burned chile is bitter chile, and bitter pambazos are not pambazos. They are a punishment.
Put the toasted chiles in a heatproof bowl with the garlic and onion. Cover with hot water, not boiling. Soak 15 minutes until soft. Transfer the chiles, garlic, and onion to a blender with 1 cup of the soaking liquid, oregano, cumin, cloves, and salt. Blend on high until completely smooth. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a wide shallow dish. The salsa should be thin enough to soak into bread but thick enough to coat it red. If it looks like watery tea, blend in more solids. If it looks like paste, thin with more soaking liquid. You want the consistency of tomato juice.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the lard in a heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the chorizo and break it up with a wooden spoon. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, until the fat has rendered and the meat has darkened. Good Mexican chorizo releases red-orange fat from its own chile and vinegar. Do not drain it. La manteca es el sabor.
Add the cooked potatoes to the chorizo. Mash some of them roughly with the back of the spoon, leaving plenty of cubes intact. You want a mix of textures: creamy from the smashed potato, firm from the cubes, fatty and spiced from the chorizo. Taste for salt. Most chorizo brings enough on its own, but check. Keep the filling warm.
Heat a large cast iron skillet or plancha over medium with 2 tablespoons of lard, enough to coat the surface. While it warms, dip a whole pambazo roll into the strained guajillo salsa. Submerge it briefly on each side, no more than 3 seconds per side. The bread should be stained red on the outside but not waterlogged. If it sags or tears, your bath is too thin or your bread too soft. This is the step that names the dish. No me vengas con atajos.
Lay the dipped roll onto the hot lard. Press lightly with a spatula. Fry 2 to 3 minutes per side, until the outside crisps and turns a deeper red-mahogany where the salsa meets the fat. The bread should hold its shape and the surface should look almost lacquered. Add more lard between rolls as needed. The pan should never be dry.
Pull a fried pambazo off the plancha and split it lengthwise with a serrated knife, keeping a hinge on one side. Pile in a generous spoonful of the papa con chorizo. Top with shredded lettuce, a heavy drizzle of crema, and a handful of crumbled queso fresco. Press the top down gently. Repeat with the rest. Eat immediately, standing up if necessary, with napkins. The fillings will leak. The hands will turn red. Así se hace y punto.
1 serving (about 290g)
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