Chef Lupita
Apaseo el Grande Carnitas (Carnitas Estilo Apaseo)
Guanajuato's Apaseo el Grande carnitas, pork shoulder and skin cooked slowly in manteca de cerdo with orange, salt, and milk, then torn and crisped on the comal for celebration tacos.
Culinary Explorer
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Sierra Gorda Capones de Nopales con Xoconostle
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Sierra Gorda de Guanajuato's capones are tender nopales stewed with sour xoconostle, chile pasilla, epazote, and cebolla, a milpa-and-monte pot finished with queso fresco and eaten with hot corn tortillas.
Main Dishes
Mexican
Comfort Food
Weeknight
Make Ahead
35 min
Active Time
45 min cook•1 hr 20 min total
Yield4 to 6 servings
Guanajuato, Sierra Gorda, the northeastern sierra around Xichú, Atarjea, Santa Catarina, Victoria, and Tierra Blanca. That is where this dish belongs. Not in the flat Bajío image people carry around, all wheat fields and cajeta. This is monte cooking: nopal, xoconostle, chile pasilla, epazote, and the patient hand of women who learned to make a meal from what the hill gives back.
Capones de nopales are not fancy. They are exact. Young cactus paddles are cleaned, trimmed, cooked until the baba relaxes, then stewed in a dark pasilla sauce with wedges of xoconostle. The xoconostle is the signature. Sour prickly pear, firm-fleshed, sharp enough to make the chile stand upright. Do not replace it with sweet tuna. Do not replace it with tomatillo. Pregúntale a las señoras del mercado and they will tell you the same thing.
I first ate a version like this from an Otomí cook who set the cazuela on the table with nothing more than tortillas in a cloth-lined chiquihuite and a little queso fresco. No performance. No garnish parade. The pasilla gave the sauce its dark, raisin smell, the epazote kept the nopales honest, and the xoconostle cut through everything. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
This is a 32-state cuisine, and Guanajuato has more than one face. The city tourists know is silver, churches, and alleyways. The Sierra Gorda cooks with cactus, maguey, beans, corn, and hunger turned into intelligence. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Xoconostle comes from the Nahuatl words 'xococ,' meaning sour, and 'nochtli,' meaning prickly pear; unlike sweet tuna, its edible flesh is the acidic wall around the seed pocket, which is why central Mexican cooks used it in stews, salsas, and preserves. The Sierra Gorda de Guanajuato sits on the old northern frontier where Otomí and Chichimeca-Jonaz foodways met Spanish colonial ranching after the 16th century, but cactus, maguey, maize, and beans remained the practical base of household cooking. Capones de nopales belongs to that survival register: a meatless dish with pre-Columbian ingredients, made substantial through chile, acidity, and tortillas.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
fresh young nopales
Quantity
2 pounds
preferably nopales cambray or tender paddles, cleaned of spines
xoconostles
Quantity
4 medium
peeled, seed pockets removed, cut into wedges
dried chile pasilla mexicano
Quantity
5
stemmed and seeded
garlic cloves
Quantity
2
unpeeled
white onion
Quantity
1 small
half roasted for the sauce and half thinly sliced
corn oil
Quantity
2 tablespoons
bean broth or water
Quantity
1 1/2 cups
plus more as needed
fresh epazote
Quantity
1 large sprig
kosher salt
Quantity
1 teaspoon, plus more to taste
queso fresco
Quantity
1/2 cup
crumbled
hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)
Quantity
for serving
warmed
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| fresh young nopalespreferably nopales cambray or tender paddles, cleaned of spines | 2 pounds |
| xoconostlespeeled, seed pockets removed, cut into wedges | 4 medium |
| dried chile pasilla mexicanostemmed and seeded | 5 |
| garlic clovesunpeeled | 2 |
| white onionhalf roasted for the sauce and half thinly sliced | 1 small |
| corn oil | 2 tablespoons |
| bean broth or waterplus more as needed | 1 1/2 cups |
| fresh epazote | 1 large sprig |
| kosher salt | 1 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| queso frescocrumbled | 1/2 cup |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)warmed | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Cast iron comal or well-used clay comal
- •Small sharp knife or nopal scraper
- •Lead-free clay cazuela from Apaseo el Alto or a heavy 12-inch skillet
- •Blender
- •Fine-mesh strainer
Instructions
- 1
Clean the nopales
Lay each nopal flat on the board and scrape away the spines and eyes with a small sharp knife. Trim the dry edge. If the paddles are small, leave them whole and score them in a shallow crosshatch. If they are larger, cut them into wide strips. Capones means the nopal has been cleaned and trimmed for the pot, not drowned in a jar. No me vengas con jarred nopales for this dish.
Fresh nopales should be firm, bright green, and a little sticky when cut. If they are limp or gray at the edges, they are old. Start at the market, not the stove. - 2
Cook the nopales
Place the nopales in a pot with enough water to cover by one inch, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and one small slice of the onion. Bring to a steady simmer and cook 12 to 15 minutes, until the color turns deep olive and the flesh is tender but still has bite. The baba will foam. Let it. That is the nopal doing what nopal does. Drain and rinse once with warm water.
- 3
Prepare the xoconostle
Cut off the ends of each xoconostle, peel away the thick skin, and open the fruit lengthwise. Scoop out the seed pocket with a spoon and keep the firm sour flesh. Cut it into wedges. Xoconostle is not regular tuna and it is not tomatillo. The sourness is the point. Remove it and you have changed the dish.
- 4
Toast the pasilla
Heat a dry comal over medium. Toast the chile pasilla mexicano one at a time, about 15 to 20 seconds per side, just until the skin softens, shines, and smells like raisins and dark earth. Do not blacken them. Pasilla is thin and bitter when burned. Place the toasted chiles in a bowl and cover with hot water for 15 minutes.
- 5
Roast the aromatics
On the same comal, roast the unpeeled garlic and the reserved half onion until the garlic skin is spotted and the onion has browned edges. Peel the garlic. This little char gives the sauce its backbone. A raw blender sauce tastes lazy, and the women who make this in the Sierra would hear it before they tasted it.
- 6
Blend the sauce
Drain the soaked chiles and place them in a blender with the roasted garlic, roasted onion, 1 cup bean broth or water, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Blend until completely smooth. Strain through a fine-mesh sieve if your blender leaves skins behind. The sauce should be dark brick-red, earthy, and loose enough to pour.
- 7
Fry the cebolla
Heat the corn oil in a lead-free clay cazuela or heavy skillet over medium. Add the thinly sliced white onion and cook until it softens and turns translucent at the edges, about 5 minutes. This is a vegetarian pot, so the oil stays clean and quiet. The sweetness of the onion has to carry the chile, not fight it.
- 8
Stew the capones
Pour the pasilla sauce into the cazuela with the onion. It will thicken quickly. Stir and cook 4 to 5 minutes, until the sauce darkens and a light oil sheen appears at the edges. Add the cooked nopales, xoconostle wedges, epazote, and the remaining 1/2 cup bean broth or water. Simmer uncovered for 18 to 22 minutes, stirring gently, until the xoconostle softens but still holds its shape and the sauce clings to the nopales.
- 9
Finish and serve
Taste for salt. Pull out the epazote sprig. Spoon the capones into a shallow cazuela and scatter the queso fresco over the top just before serving. Eat with hot corn tortillas from the comal. The tortilla is not decoration, it is the utensil. Así se hace y punto.
Chef Tips
- •Buy chile pasilla mexicano, the dried chilaca: long, wrinkled, dark brown, with a smell like raisins and cacao. Some stores in the United States call ancho 'pasilla.' They are wrong. Ask the chile vendor.
- •Xoconostle cannot be substituted with regular tuna or tomatillo. Regular tuna is sweet and soft. Tomatillo is green, seedy, and from a different plant family. If the market has no xoconostle, cook another nopal dish today and make this when the market cooperates.
- •Use a lead-free glazed clay cazuela if you have one. The xoconostle is acidic, and old leaded clay has no place in a modern kitchen. Tradition does not require poisoning anybody.
- •Bean broth gives the sauce body without meat. If you cooked bayo or flor de mayo beans that week, use that broth. Water works, but bean broth tastes like a house where people cook.
- •For a vegan table, leave off the queso fresco. Do not replace it with a fake cheese that tastes like a candle. The stew stands on its own.
Advance Preparation
- •The nopales can be cleaned, cooked, drained, and refrigerated one day ahead. Keep them covered and do not add the queso until serving.
- •The chile pasilla sauce can be blended up to three days ahead and refrigerated. Fry it in the cazuela when you are ready to make the stew.
- •The finished stew keeps for four days in the refrigerator. Reheat gently with a splash of bean broth or water, then finish with queso fresco at the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 330g)
Calories
285 calories
Total Fat
11 g
Saturated Fat
3 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
8 g
Cholesterol
10 mg
Sodium
640 mg
Total Carbohydrates
41 g
Dietary Fiber
11 g
Sugars
6 g
Protein
9 g
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