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Wakabaki Yoreme
Created by
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.
Soups & Stews
Mexican
Holiday
Special Occasion
Celebration
30 min
Active Time
3 hr 30 min cook•4 hr total
Yield10 to 12 servings
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.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
beef shank with bone (chambarete)
Quantity
4 pounds
cut into thick cross-cut pieces
beef short ribs or beef neck bones
Quantity
2 pounds
dried garbanzos
Quantity
1 pound
soaked overnight in cold water
white onion
Quantity
1 large
halved
head of garlic
Quantity
1
halved crosswise
bay leaves
Quantity
2
kosher salt
Quantity
1 tablespoon, plus more to taste
fresh white corn
Quantity
4 ears
husked and cut into 2-inch rounds
calabacitas (Mexican squash)
Quantity
3 medium
cut into 1-inch chunks
ejotes (green beans)
Quantity
1/2 pound
trimmed and cut in half
chayotes
Quantity
2 medium
peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
potatoes
Quantity
2 medium
peeled and cut into large chunks
fresh cilantro
Quantity
1 bunch
tied with kitchen string
dried chiltepin (optional)
Quantity
for serving
crushed
lime wedges (optional)
Quantity
for serving
diced white onion (optional)
Quantity
for serving
chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
Quantity
for serving
tortillas de harina sobaqueras (optional)
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 |
Equipment Needed
- •Heavy 12-quart stockpot or large olla de peltre (enameled tin pot)
- •Long-handled wooden spoon for stirring a deep pot
- •Sharp heavy knife for cutting corn into rounds
- •Slotted spoon or kitchen spider for serving
Instructions
- 1
Soak the garbanzos
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.
- 2
Start the broth
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.
The bone matters. Wakabaki without bone is just beef soup. The marrow and the connective tissue give the broth the body and the slight gel that the Yoreme cooks consider the mark of a properly made pot. - 3
Add the garbanzos
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.
- 4
Add the corn and the harder vegetables
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.
- 5
Add the calabacitas and ejotes
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.
- 6
Final adjustment
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.
- 7
Serve at the table
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.
Chef Tips
- •The chiltepin is not optional and it is not a substitute target. If you cannot find dried chiltepin, ask at a Sonoran or Sinaloan grocer, or order it from a Sonoran source online. Chile de arbol or piquin will not give you the same flavor. Chiltepin is small, round, and explosively hot with a clean, almost smoky heat that fades fast. It is the chile of the noroeste and of this dish.
- •Tortillas de harina sobaqueras are the bread of this stew, not corn tortillas. They are large, thin, and flexible, made with flour and lard and stretched by hand against the cook's forearm (sobaco, hence the name). If you can find them at a Sonoran panaderia, buy them. If not, the thinnest flour tortillas you can find are the next compromise. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and in Sonora and northern Sinaloa, harina is correct.
- •Dried garbanzos are non-negotiable. Canned garbanzos cook to mush and do not release the starch the broth needs. Soak them overnight. The whole dish takes time, and the garbanzos are not where you save it.
- •Wakabaki is better the second day. The broth tightens, the garbanzos absorb more flavor, the beef relaxes further. Make it the day before a gathering. The Yoreme cooks I know start the pot the night before.
Advance Preparation
- •Soak the garbanzos the night before. This is not optional.
- •The full stew can be made one day ahead through step 3 (broth and garbanzos), refrigerated, and finished with the vegetables the day of serving so they keep their texture.
- •Wakabaki keeps refrigerated for three to four days and the flavor deepens. Reheat gently. Do not boil hard or the calabacitas will fall apart.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 490g)
Calories
565 calories
Total Fat
20 g
Saturated Fat
7 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
11 g
Cholesterol
110 mg
Sodium
410 mg
Total Carbohydrates
47 g
Dietary Fiber
12 g
Sugars
5 g
Protein
51 g
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