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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Verdita Oaxaqueña
Created by
Oaxaca's green chaser for mezcal espadín, blended cold from ripe pineapple, cilantro, hierbabuena, and chile serrano. The bright sip that resets the palate between mezcales and that no Oaxaqueño would let you skip.
Beverages
Mexican
Date Night
Dinner Party
15 min
Active Time
0 min cook•15 min total
Yield6 servings (about 4 cups)
Verdita is from Oaxaca. It does not exist apart from mezcal. You do not drink verdita on its own at brunch the way Americans drink green juice. You drink it in a small clay copita next to a small clay copita of mezcal espadín, sip for sip, the cold green clearing the smoke of the warm spirit so the next sip lands clean.
The sauce, and that is what it is, a blended sauce more than a juice, lives on pineapple, cilantro, hierbabuena, and chile serrano. Hierbabuena, not peppermint. The two are not the same and Oaxaca knows it. Pineapple from the lowlands gives the sweetness and the body. The chile is small but present. You should feel it at the back of your throat after the second sip, not on the first. If it bites on the first sip, you used too much chile and the verdita will fight the mezcal instead of partnering with it.
I learned to make this in Tlacolula, sitting at a long wooden table at a mezcaleria where the woman who ran the place blended verdita in batches for the whole afternoon and refused to write the proportions down. She told me to taste it until I knew what it should taste like. Then she said the same thing my mother used to say: saber cocinar es saber vivir. Every cook in Oaxaca makes their verdita slightly differently and every one of them will tell you theirs is correct. They are all correct. The frame is fixed, the ratios are personal.
Verdita as a mezcal chaser is a relatively modern Oaxacan tradition, formalized in the mezcalerias and palenques of the Valles Centrales over the last fifty years as artisanal mezcal moved from rural household drink to centerpiece of regional gastronomy. The pairing draws on a much older Mesoamerican logic of drinking fermented agave alongside fresh fruit and herb infusions, a practice the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples used to balance the intensity of pulque and early agave distillates. The pineapple itself is not native to Oaxaca but to lowland tropical Mexico and South America, and its arrival in Oaxacan kitchens during the colonial period through trade routes from Veracruz gave verdita its now-defining sweetness; the herbs, cilantro and hierbabuena, were Spanish introductions that took root so completely in Oaxacan cooking that no one thinks of them as foreign anymore.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
fresh pineapple
Quantity
4 cups
peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (about half a ripe pineapple)
fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems
Quantity
1 cup, packed
fresh hierbabuena or spearmint leaves
Quantity
1 cup, packed
fresh chile serrano
Quantity
2
stemmed (1 if you want it gentle, 3 if you grew up with it)
fresh lime juice
Quantity
1/2 cup (about 5 to 6 Mexican limes)
water
Quantity
1/4 cup, plus more to thin
sugar
Quantity
2 tablespoons, or to taste
kosher salt
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon
ice
Quantity
for chilling the pitcher
mezcal espadín
Quantity
for serving alongside
sal de gusano (optional)
Quantity
for the rim of the mezcal copita
orange slices (optional)
Quantity
for serving alongside
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| fresh pineapplepeeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (about half a ripe pineapple) | 4 cups |
| fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems | 1 cup, packed |
| fresh hierbabuena or spearmint leaves | 1 cup, packed |
| fresh chile serranostemmed (1 if you want it gentle, 3 if you grew up with it) | 2 |
| fresh lime juice | 1/2 cup (about 5 to 6 Mexican limes) |
| water | 1/4 cup, plus more to thin |
| sugar | 2 tablespoons, or to taste |
| kosher salt | 1/2 teaspoon |
| ice | for chilling the pitcher |
| mezcal espadín | for serving alongside |
| sal de gusano (optional) | for the rim of the mezcal copita |
| orange slices (optional) | for serving alongside |
Equipment Needed
- •High-powered blender
- •Fine-mesh strainer (optional, depending on your preference)
- •Glass pitcher for chilling
- •Small clay copitas or veladoras for serving alongside the mezcal
Instructions
- 1
Choose the pineapple
Smell the bottom of the pineapple. It should smell sweet and floral, not green and grassy. The leaves should pull from the crown with a gentle tug. A flat, underripe pineapple makes a flat verdita. The fruit is the foundation of the drink. Si no conoces el mercado, no conoces la cocina.
Buy the pineapple two days ahead and let it ripen on the counter. The acid mellows and the sugar comes forward. A green pineapple makes a sour, vegetal verdita that no amount of sugar will fix. - 2
Wash and pick the herbs
Fill a bowl with cold water and submerge the cilantro and the hierbabuena. Swish them around. The grit will sink. Lift the herbs out, do not pour them into a strainer, or the grit comes with them. Pick the cilantro leaves with the tender upper stems. Discard only the thick lower stems. The flavor lives in the stems as much as the leaves. For the hierbabuena, take the leaves and tender tips. Discard the woody stems.
- 3
Build the blend
Place the pineapple chunks in the blender first. The fruit gives the blade something to bite into. Add the cilantro, hierbabuena, serrano chile, lime juice, water, sugar, and salt on top. Blend on high for a full minute. You want a vivid, opaque green liquid with no chunks. If your blender struggles, add another tablespoon of water at a time. Do not over-water it. The verdita should have body, not be a thin juice.
- 4
Taste and adjust
Taste it from a spoon. It should be bright, herbaceous, sweet enough to balance the lime, and warm at the back of the throat from the chile. If it tastes shy, add another pinch of salt. If the chile is sleeping, add half a serrano and blend again. If your pineapple was very tart, add another teaspoon of sugar. The verdita should taste like the herb garden and the fruit stand met in a glass. Asi se hace y punto.
- 5
Strain or do not strain
This is where Oaxacan cooks disagree. Some strain it through a fine-mesh sieve for a smoother chaser. Some leave it textured, with the herb fibers visible. I leave it textured. The pulp tells you the drink is real, not a syrup poured from a bottle. Do whichever your blender produced honestly.
- 6
Chill the pitcher
Pour the verdita into a glass pitcher and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving. It should be cold, not iced down. Adding ice directly to the verdita waters it down and dulls the green. Chill the pitcher itself if you can. The cold is part of why this works alongside mezcal: the warm spirit and the cold chaser play against each other.
- 7
Serve alongside the mezcal
Pour mezcal espadín into small clay copitas or veladoras. Pour the verdita into separate copitas of the same size. Set them side by side, one mezcal, one verdita, for each guest. The order is sacred: a small sip of mezcal, breathed in slowly, then a sip of verdita to clean the palate and reset the mouth. Never mix them in the same glass. The verdita is not a mixer. It is a partner. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this is how Oaxaca drinks.
Chef Tips
- •Use mezcal espadín for the pairing, not joven, not reposado, not añejo. Espadín is the everyday agave of Oaxaca and it is what verdita was built around. A young espadín from a small palenque in Santiago Matatlán is the right partner. If your bottle says 'tequila,' put it back. This is a different drink.
- •Hierbabuena is the herb. Spearmint is an acceptable substitute if you cannot find it because they are botanically close. Peppermint is not. Peppermint pushes the verdita toward toothpaste and ruins the balance. If your market has only peppermint, use only cilantro and call it something else.
- •Verdita does not keep. Make it the day you serve it. After about four hours in the refrigerator, the herbs oxidize, the green dulls to olive, and the bright snap is gone. No me vengas con atajos. If you have leftover verdita the next day, drink it yourself in the morning. Do not serve it to guests.
Advance Preparation
- •The pineapple can be peeled and cubed up to one day ahead and refrigerated in a sealed container. The acidity actually develops slightly overnight.
- •The herbs can be washed and picked up to four hours ahead, wrapped in a damp cloth in the refrigerator. Do not blend the verdita more than two hours before serving. The color and flavor degrade quickly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 145g)
Calories
80 calories
Total Fat
0 g
Saturated Fat
0 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
0 g
Cholesterol
0 mg
Sodium
120 mg
Total Carbohydrates
20 g
Dietary Fiber
2 g
Sugars
14 g
Protein
1 g
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