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The Yoreme and Yaqui ancestral beef-and-vegetable stew from northern Sinaloa and southern Sonora, slow-cooked in a single pot with garbanzos, corn, calabacitas, and ejotes for novenarios, weddings, and Dia de Muertos.
Wakabaki is from the noroeste. Specifically from the Yoreme (also called Mayo) communities of northern Sinaloa and southern Sonora, and from the Yaqui pueblos of the Rio Yaqui valley. The word itself is Cahita, the language family that the Yoreme and Yaqui share, and it means, in plain terms, beef stew. Plain in name, ceremonial in practice.
This is the pot that comes out for a novenario, the nine days of prayer after a death. It comes out for a wedding. It comes out for the fiestas of Holy Week and for Dia de Muertos. The Yoreme cooks I worked with in El Fuerte and the Yaqui women I sat with in Vicam in Sonora cook it in pots that hold thirty or forty liters, set over mesquite fires in outdoor kitchens. The whole community eats from one pot. That is the form of the dish. A small batch on a stovetop is a compromise, but you can still honor the proportions and the patience.
The ingredients are direct: beef on the bone, dried garbanzos, fresh corn cut into rounds, calabacitas, ejotes, chayote, potato. No browning. No tomato. No chile in the broth. The seasoning happens at the table, where each person crushes dried chiltepin (the wild bird chile of the Sonoran desert, the fire of the noroeste) into their own bowl. This is not a chile-forward stew like a mole de olla. The flavor is beef, bone, garbanzo, and the sweetness the vegetables release as they finish.
My mother did not cook wakabaki. She was from Jalisco. I learned this dish in a courtyard in El Fuerte, watching a Yoreme cook named Doña Albina stir a forty-liter pot with a wooden paddle the length of my arm. She told me the broth has to be honest. No browning, no shortcuts, no chile thrown in to cover what the meat cannot do on its own. If your beef is good and your garbanzos are good, the pot tells the truth. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Wakabaki belongs to the culinary tradition of the Cahita-speaking peoples of the noroeste, principally the Yoreme (Mayo) of northern Sinaloa and the Yaqui of southern Sonora, and the dish in its current form is a post-contact synthesis: pre-Columbian Cahita cooking centered on corn, squash, beans, and game, while beef, garbanzos, and the long-simmered one-pot format arrived after Jesuit missionaries established cattle ranching in the region in the 17th century. The dish is inseparable from Yoreme and Yaqui ceremonial life, particularly the Lenten and Easter observances of the deer dance (pascola) and the novenario rituals for the dead, where wakabaki is cooked communally in large pots and shared as part of obligations to the departed. The chiltepin served alongside is itself a sacred plant in Sonoran Cahita and Tohono O'odham traditions, harvested wild from the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental and considered the mother of all chiles by some indigenous cooks of the noroeste.
Quantity
4 pounds
cut into thick cross-cut pieces
Quantity
2 pounds
Quantity
1 pound
soaked overnight in cold water
Quantity
1 large
halved
Quantity
1
halved crosswise
Quantity
2
Quantity
1 tablespoon, plus more to taste
Quantity
4 ears
husked and cut into 2-inch rounds
Quantity
3 medium
cut into 1-inch chunks
Quantity
1/2 pound
trimmed and cut in half
Quantity
2 medium
peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
Quantity
2 medium
peeled and cut into large chunks
Quantity
1 bunch
tied with kitchen string
Quantity
for serving
crushed
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
warmed
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| beef shank with bone (chambarete)cut into thick cross-cut pieces | 4 pounds |
| beef short ribs or beef neck bones | 2 pounds |
| dried garbanzossoaked overnight in cold water | 1 pound |
| white onionhalved | 1 large |
| head of garlichalved crosswise | 1 |
| bay leaves | 2 |
| kosher salt | 1 tablespoon, plus more to taste |
| fresh white cornhusked and cut into 2-inch rounds | 4 ears |
| calabacitas (Mexican squash)cut into 1-inch chunks | 3 medium |
| ejotes (green beans)trimmed and cut in half | 1/2 pound |
| chayotespeeled and cut into 1-inch chunks | 2 medium |
| potatoespeeled and cut into large chunks | 2 medium |
| fresh cilantrotied with kitchen string | 1 bunch |
| dried chiltepin (optional)crushed | for serving |
| lime wedges (optional) | for serving |
| diced white onion (optional) | for serving |
| chopped fresh cilantro (optional) | for serving |
| tortillas de harina sobaqueras (optional)warmed | for serving |
The night before, place the dried garbanzos in a large bowl and cover with cold water by four inches. Leave them on the counter overnight. They will double in size. Canned garbanzos are not the same and the Yoreme cooks I learned from in El Fuerte will not use them. The dried ones release starch into the broth as they cook and that body is part of what makes wakabaki wakabaki. No me vengas con atajos.
Place the beef shank and short ribs in a large stockpot, at least 12 quarts. The pot needs to be big. Wakabaki is a communal dish and the volume is not a mistake. Cover the meat with cold water by three inches. Add the halved onion, halved garlic head, bay leaves, and salt. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Skim the gray foam that rises in the first twenty minutes. Cold water draws the flavor out slowly. A hard boil clouds the broth and toughens the meat.
Drain the soaked garbanzos and add them to the pot. Lower the heat until you see lazy bubbles every few seconds. Cover partially and cook for two hours. The meat should pull from the bone but still hold its shape, and the garbanzos should be tender but not bursting. Taste the broth at this stage. It should already taste like beef and chickpea, deep and savory. If it is flat, add salt. The vegetables coming next will absorb whatever is in the pot.
Add the corn rounds, the chayote, and the potatoes. These need the most time. Push them down so the broth covers them. Tie the cilantro bunch with string and submerge it in the pot. Tying it keeps you from fishing leaves out at the end. Simmer for 20 minutes.
Add the calabacitas and the ejotes. These are tender and cook fast. Twelve to fifteen minutes is enough. The squash should still hold a little bite. Vegetables turned to mush insult the dish. The Yoreme name wakabaki refers specifically to a beef-and-vegetable stew, and the vegetables need to be recognizable, each one keeping its shape.
Pull out the cilantro bundle and discard it. Pull out the spent onion halves and the garlic head. Taste the broth one more time. Adjust salt. The pot should look generous: corn rounds floating, garbanzos throughout, beef on the bone visible, the vegetables holding their colors. This is what abundance looks like in a Yoreme kitchen during a novenario or a Holy Week gathering.
Ladle generously into deep bowls. Each bowl should have a piece of beef on the bone, a corn round, garbanzos, and a mix of the vegetables. Set the chiltepin, lime, diced onion, cilantro, and warm flour tortillas in small dishes around the table. Each person crushes the chiltepin into their own bowl, squeezes lime, adds onion. The flour tortillas, sobaqueras, the thin large ones from the noroeste, are the right tortilla here. Corn tortillas are not wrong, but in Sinaloa and Sonora the bread of this stew is harina. Asi se hace y punto.
1 serving (about 490g)
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