Chef Lupita
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Champurrado de Coco Costeño
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The Costa Chica's coconut champurrado, masa and cacao whisked thick with a molinillo and finished with coconut milk instead of dairy. The Afro-Mexican Pacific coast's answer to the champurrado of central Mexico, and proof that one cuisine has many faces.
Beverages
Mexican
Comfort Food
Holiday
Weeknight
20 min
Active Time
30 min cook•50 min total
Yield6 servings
This is from the Costa Chica, the band of Pacific coast that runs from below Acapulco through Guerrero and into Oaxaca. This is Afro-Mexican country. Cuajinicuilapa, Ometepec, San Marcos, towns where the people descend from Africans enslaved and brought to this coast in the colonial period, and where the kitchen still carries that history in every pot.
Champurrado is a chocolate atole: corn masa and cacao cooked until it is thick enough to coat a spoon. Central Mexico builds it on water or milk. The Costa Chica builds it on coconut. The palms grow right down to the sand here, so the cooks reach for what the coast gives them. Coconut milk instead of dairy. That one change is the whole dish, and it tastes like nowhere else in the country.
The masa goes into cool water and through a strainer before it ever meets heat. Lumps are the mark of a careless cook, and once they cook in there is no whisking them out. You raise the foam with a molinillo, the carved wooden whip you spin between your palms, not because it is charming but because it froths the chocolate and keeps the masa moving so it does not scorch on the bottom. No me vengas con atajos. A blender does not do what a molinillo does.
Know what this is and what it is not. This is champurrado: warm, thick, masa and cacao. It is not chilate, the cold cacao-and-rice drink this same coast grinds on the metate and serves with buñuelos at its festivals. Two drinks, one region, nothing alike. I learned this version from a woman in Cuajinicuilapa who grated the coconut by hand over a clay bowl and laughed when I asked whether canned would do. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
Champurrado is a chocolate atole, and atole is pre-Columbian, its name taken from the Nahuatl 'atolli,' a corn-masa drink that predates the conquest; the cinnamon and cane sugar worked into the modern version arrived later through Spanish trade. The coconut that defines the Costa Chica version is not native to Mexico: the palms reached the Pacific coast aboard the Manila-Acapulco galleons in the late 1500s, carried by Filipino sailors and rooted first around Colima and Acapulco before spreading down the coasts of Guerrero and Oaxaca. The Costa Chica's Afro-Mexican communities, descended from Africans enslaved during the colonial period, went unrecognized in the federal Constitution until a 2019 reform to Article 2, and the 2020 national census was the first to count them, recording roughly 2.5 million people, about 2 percent of the population, as Afro-Mexican.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
masa harina (masa de maíz nixtamalizado)
Quantity
1/2 cup
or 1 cup fresh masa from a molino
water
Quantity
3 cups, divided
use fresh coconut water for part, if you have it
fresh coconut milk
Quantity
3 cups (from about 2 mature coconuts)
or two 13.5-ounce cans full-fat coconut milk
Mexican chocolate de mesa, preferably oaxaqueño
Quantity
4 to 5 ounces (about 1.5 disks)
chopped
piloncillo
Quantity
1 small cone (3 to 4 ounces), plus more to taste
chopped
canela de Ceilán (true Ceylon cinnamon)
Quantity
1 stick (4 inches)
sea salt
Quantity
1 pinch
freshly grated coconut, lightly toasted (optional)
Quantity
for serving
ground Ceylon cinnamon (optional)
Quantity
for dusting
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| masa harina (masa de maíz nixtamalizado)or 1 cup fresh masa from a molino | 1/2 cup |
| wateruse fresh coconut water for part, if you have it | 3 cups, divided |
| fresh coconut milkor two 13.5-ounce cans full-fat coconut milk | 3 cups (from about 2 mature coconuts) |
| Mexican chocolate de mesa, preferably oaxaqueñochopped | 4 to 5 ounces (about 1.5 disks) |
| piloncillochopped | 1 small cone (3 to 4 ounces), plus more to taste |
| canela de Ceilán (true Ceylon cinnamon) | 1 stick (4 inches) |
| sea salt | 1 pinch |
| freshly grated coconut, lightly toasted (optional) | for serving |
| ground Ceylon cinnamon (optional) | for dusting |
Equipment Needed
- •Clay olla (olla de barro)
- •Carved wooden molinillo
- •Fine-mesh strainer
- •Wooden spoon
Instructions
- 1
Dissolve and strain the masa
Whisk the masa harina into 2 cups of the water until you have a thin, smooth slurry with no clumps. Use cool water, not hot. Hot water seizes the masa into lumps before you can break them up. Pour the slurry through a fine-mesh strainer into your clay olla, working any thick bits through with a spoon or leaving them behind. Lumps are the mark of a careless cook, and once they cook into the champurrado there is no whisking them out.
If you have fresh masa from a molino, use a heaping cup and thin it with the water before you strain. Fresh masa makes a rounder, cleaner champurrado than masa harina, but masa harina is reliable and what most kitchens reach for. - 2
Steep the cinnamon and sweeten the base
Add the remaining 1 cup water, the canela stick, the chopped piloncillo, and the pinch of salt to the olla. Set it over medium heat and whisk from the first minute with a molinillo or wooden spoon. As it warms, the masa thickens and wants to settle and scorch on the bottom of the pot, so keep it moving. The salt is not optional. It pulls the cacao and the piloncillo together and rounds the whole drink.
A clay olla holds heat hard and keeps holding it after you lower the flame. Cook gentle. This is barro, not metal, and that slow steady heat is half the reason champurrado tastes the way it does in a Costa Chica kitchen. - 3
Melt in the chocolate
When the base is very hot and lightly thickened, about 8 to 10 minutes, drop in the chopped chocolate de mesa. Whisk until every piece dissolves and the surface turns glossy and deep brown. Now work the molinillo: hold the handle upright between your palms and spin it back and forth. That spinning is what froths the chocolate and gives champurrado its body. A spoon stirs. A molinillo lifts.
Use real chocolate de mesa, the round tablets ground with sugar and cinnamon. Cocoa powder or baking chocolate will not give you the same body or foam. Ibarra and Abuelita are the supermarket compromise. A tablet ground at an Oaxacan molino is the real thing. - 4
Add the coconut milk
Pour in the coconut milk and stir it through. Bring it back to a bare simmer over medium-low. Do not let it boil hard. A hard boil breaks the coconut milk into greasy flecks and scorches the masa underneath. Cook gently, whisking often, for 10 to 12 minutes, until the champurrado coats the back of a wooden spoon and a line drawn through it holds for a second. That thick, clinging body is what you are after.
Keep the flame low once the coconut milk goes in. Coconut milk is more delicate than dairy. Let it gallop and it separates, and you will taste burnt masa under the chocolate. No me vengas con atajos. This is a stand-at-the-stove drink. - 5
Froth and taste
Fish out the canela stick. Taste for sweetness and add more piloncillo if you want it, whisking until it dissolves. Remember the chocolate de mesa is already sweetened, so go slow. Work the molinillo hard for the last minute to raise a good cap of foam, the espuma, across the top. That foam is the sign of a champurrado made by hand, not one stirred lazily with a spoon.
- 6
Serve in clay
Pour into clay jarritos or jícara gourd cups while it is hot and thick. Dust with toasted coconut and a little ground cinnamon if you like. On the Costa Chica this is breakfast, it is a cold-night drink, it is what the women set out for the family through the holidays. Drink it slow. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Chef Tips
- •Fresh coconut milk is the real Costa Chica way. Grate the meat of two mature coconuts, soak it in warm water, then squeeze it through a cloth and use that liquid. Full-fat canned coconut milk is the honest compromise and works well. The light, reduced-fat cans are not worth opening. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
- •Buy your piloncillo by the cone and chop it with a heavy knife, or grate it. The dark molasses depth is the point. White sugar will sweeten the drink but it will not give you that flavor, and you will wonder why yours tastes thinner than the one on the coast.
- •For a more rustic, Costa Chica result, grind toasted cacao beans with the piloncillo and use that in place of some of the chocolate de mesa. It is closer to how the old cooks did it before the molded tablets reached the coast. Adjust the piloncillo to taste either way.
- •If you cannot find true canela de Ceilán, the soft, papery, light-tan stick, you will probably end up with cassia, the hard reddish bark sold as cinnamon in most stores. Use less of it. Cassia is sharper and will bully the cacao and the coconut if you are not careful.
Advance Preparation
- •Champurrado is best the moment it is made. It thickens as it cools and the masa settles, so if you hold it, keep it over very low heat and whisk often with the molinillo.
- •To make it a few hours ahead, cook it through, cool it, then rewarm gently with a splash of coconut milk or water to loosen it back to a spoon-coating body, whisking to bring the foam back up. It does not keep well overnight. The masa breaks down and turns gluey.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 270g)
Calories
475 calories
Total Fat
32 g
Saturated Fat
27 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
5 g
Cholesterol
0 mg
Sodium
70 mg
Total Carbohydrates
48 g
Dietary Fiber
5 g
Sugars
34 g
Protein
5 g
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