Chef Lupita
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Culinary Explorer
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Tortitas de Yuca con Caldillo Afromestizo
Created by
From the Costa Chica de Oaxaca, where Mexico's Black communities have cooked for four centuries: grated cassava and queso fresco patties fried in pork lard, then bathed in a brick-red caldillo built on fruity chile costeño.
Main Dishes
Mexican
Weeknight
Budget Friendly
Comfort Food
40 min
Active Time
45 min cook•1 hr 25 min total
Yield4 to 6 servings (about 16 tortitas)
This is from the Costa Chica de Oaxaca, the Pacific coast that runs from Pinotepa Nacional down through Collantes and Corralero to the lagoons of Chacahua. Black Mexico lives here. Afromexicanos, the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to this coast more than four hundred years ago, who built towns, herded cattle, and cooked a food that is neither Indigenous nor Spanish but its own thing. La tercera raíz, the third root of this country. No es nota al pie. Es plato principal. This dish is the proof.
Yuca did not grow here first. Cassava came across the Atlantic with the Columbian exchange, and with it came the hands that knew what to do: grate it, squeeze it dry in a cloth, fry it in pork fat. That frying habit is African and Caribbean, and on this coast it never left. The pantry around it tells the same story. Plátano macho, cacahuate, ajonjolí, coco. Ingredients that traveled with a people and stayed. Here, grated yuca and queso fresco become tortitas, fried in manteca until the edges turn gold. La manteca es el sabor. Don't argue with the lard.
The caldillo is where Oaxaca speaks. Chile costeño is the small red chile that grows on this coast and almost nowhere else, fruity and sharp and hotter than it looks. You toast it with guajillo, char a few tomatoes on the comal, blend, strain, and fry the puree in manteca until it darkens and the fat rises. Then you loosen it into a brothy sauce and let the tortitas drink it. The caldillo finishes cooking them. That is the design, not an accident.
My mother was from Jalisco. She never cooked yuca a day in her life, and her notebook has not one word about the Costa Chica. I learned this on the road, in a kitchen in Collantes, from a señora who grated the yuca on her lap while she told me her grandmother did it the same way. She fried the tortitas in lard rendered that morning and bathed them in a costeño caldillo so red it stained the clay. I wrote it down the way I write everything down, so it does not disappear. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Africans were brought to New Spain in large numbers beginning in the 16th century, and the Costa Chica of Guerrero and Oaxaca became one of the densest concentrations of Afro-descendant population in the colony, where they worked the cattle haciendas and the coast. Cassava (yuca), domesticated in South America and carried across the Atlantic world, entered this regional diet through Caribbean and Afro-descendant foodways more than through the central Mexican corn tradition. Mexico's Afro-descendant communities were recognized in the federal Constitution only with a 2019 reform to Article 2, and the 2020 national census was the first to count them, identifying roughly two and a half million people.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
fresh yuca (cassava)
Quantity
2 pounds
peeled, cored, and grated on the large holes
queso fresco
Quantity
6 ounces
crumbled, plus more for serving
egg
Quantity
1 large
lightly beaten
kosher salt
Quantity
3/4 teaspoon, plus more to taste
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
1/2 cup
for frying the tortitas
dried chile costeño
Quantity
6
stemmed and seeded
dried chile guajillo
Quantity
3
stemmed and seeded
ripe tomatoes
Quantity
1 1/2 pounds (about 4 medium)
white onion
Quantity
1/4, plus thinly sliced for serving
garlic
Quantity
3 cloves
unpeeled
dried Oaxacan oregano
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
for the caldillo
water or light vegetable broth
Quantity
2 cups
chopped cilantro (optional)
Quantity
for serving
lime wedges (optional)
Quantity
for serving
cooked white rice (optional)
Quantity
for serving
fried ripe plátano macho (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| fresh yuca (cassava)peeled, cored, and grated on the large holes | 2 pounds |
| queso frescocrumbled, plus more for serving | 6 ounces |
| egglightly beaten | 1 large |
| kosher salt | 3/4 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard)for frying the tortitas | 1/2 cup |
| dried chile costeñostemmed and seeded | 6 |
| dried chile guajillostemmed and seeded | 3 |
| ripe tomatoes | 1 1/2 pounds (about 4 medium) |
| white onion | 1/4, plus thinly sliced for serving |
| garlicunpeeled | 3 cloves |
| dried Oaxacan oregano | 1/2 teaspoon |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard)for the caldillo | 2 tablespoons |
| water or light vegetable broth | 2 cups |
| chopped cilantro (optional) | for serving |
| lime wedges (optional) | for serving |
| cooked white rice (optional) | for serving |
| fried ripe plátano macho (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Box grater with large holes, or a food processor with a grating disc
- •Clean kitchen cloth or cheesecloth for squeezing the yuca
- •Comal or heavy skillet for toasting and charring
- •Blender
- •Fine-mesh strainer
- •Wide clay cazuela (cazuela de barro) or heavy skillet for the caldillo
- •Wire rack for draining the tortitas
Instructions
- 1
Peel and grate the yuca
Yuca has a thick, bark-like skin over a pink underlayer. Take all of it off with a knife, not a peeler. Cut the peeled root into chunks and pull out the tough, woody fiber running through the center; it never softens. Grate the flesh on the large holes of a box grater. Pile the gratings into a clean kitchen cloth, gather it up, and squeeze hard over the sink. A lot of cloudy liquid will run out. That liquid carries the bitterness you don't want, and getting rid of it is what lets the tortitas hold together. Raw yuca is never eaten. It has to be cooked, and it will be, twice, before it reaches the table.
Choose firm tubers with no soft spots. When you cut one open the flesh should be bright white. Gray or blue streaks mean it has turned, and you throw it out. Frozen peeled yuca from a Caribbean or Latin market comes already cored and works when fresh is hard to find. - 2
Build the tortita masa
Put the squeezed yuca in a bowl with the crumbled queso fresco, the beaten egg, and the salt. Work it together with your hands until it holds its shape when you press a handful. The cheese and egg bind it, and the starch left in the yuca does the rest. If it feels too wet to hold, you didn't squeeze hard enough. Wring it again. Mix this close to frying time, because grated raw yuca grays as it sits.
- 3
Toast the chiles
Heat a dry comal or heavy skillet over medium. Toast the chile costeño and the chile guajillo separately, pressing them flat for a few seconds a side until they smell toasty and turn a shade darker. The costeño is small and thin and it scorches in a blink, so keep it moving and pull it the second it puffs. Drop the toasted chiles into a bowl, cover with hot water, not boiling, and let them soften for 15 to 20 minutes.
Burned chile is bitter chile, and that bitterness does not cook out of a caldillo. If a costeño goes black, throw it out and toast another. No me vengas con atajos. - 4
Char tomatoes and aromatics
On the same comal, char the whole tomatoes, the onion piece, and the unpeeled garlic. Turn them until the tomato skins blister and blacken in spots and the garlic is soft and spotted inside its skin. Slip the garlic out of its papers. Those blackened spots are not a mistake. They give the caldillo a roasted depth you cannot get from raw tomato.
- 5
Blend and strain
Drain the chiles. Put them in the blender with the charred tomatoes, the onion, the peeled garlic, the oregano, and about half a cup of the chile soaking water. Blend until completely smooth. Pass it through a fine-mesh strainer, pressing on the solids and discarding the skins. You want a clean, pourable caldillo, not a thick salsa.
- 6
Fry the caldillo
Melt the 2 tablespoons of manteca in a wide clay cazuela or heavy skillet over medium heat. When it shimmers, pour in the strained puree all at once. It will sputter, so stand back. Fry it for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring, until it darkens from bright red to brick and the fat starts to rise at the edges. That is the sazón, the moment the raw chile turns round and deep. La manteca es el sabor. Stir in the water or broth and a good pinch of salt. Bring it to a gentle simmer and cook 10 minutes, until it coats a spoon but still runs off it. A caldillo is a sauce you ladle, not a paste.
- 7
Fry the tortitas
Heat the 1/2 cup manteca in a skillet over medium-high until a pinch of the masa sizzles on contact. Scoop about 1/4 cup of the yuca mixture, pat it into a patty a little under half an inch thick, and lay it in the fat. Don't crowd the pan. Fry until the underside is deep golden and crisp, 3 to 4 minutes, then turn once and do the same on the other side. They have to cook all the way through. The center should turn tender, never chalky. Drain them on a wire rack, not paper, so they stay crisp.
Work in batches and keep the fat hot. Tortitas dropped into cool fat drink it up and fall apart. If they brown before the center cooks, lower the heat a little and give them another minute a side. - 8
Bathe and serve
Bring the caldillo back to a bare simmer and slide the fried tortitas in, spooning the sauce over the tops. Let them sit in it for 3 to 5 minutes so they drink the caldillo and finish cooking through. Don't stir hard or they break. Serve them in a brown clay cazuela with the caldillo pooled around, crumbled queso fresco and raw onion over the top, cilantro, and lime on the side. A plate of white rice and some fried plátano macho make it the full Costa Chica meal. Así se hace y punto.
Chef Tips
- •Chile costeño is the soul of this caldillo. It grows on the Oaxaca and Guerrero coast and you'll find it in any market down there, or dried online. If you truly can't get it, use more guajillo and add a chile de árbol or two for the heat, but you'll lose the fruitiness that says Costa Chica. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade. For a smokier caldillo, a single chile pasilla oaxaqueño pulls it toward the Sierra.
- •This is a meatless main. The tortitas are yuca, cheese, and egg, and the caldillo is pure chile and tomato. But it is Afro-Mexican coast cooking, and it fries in manteca de cerdo. That is the flavor and the history both. If you keep off pork, fry in a neutral oil and you'll have a good dish, just not this one. Made with a plant cheese and oil it can go vegan, but then you're cooking something else.
- •On the Costa Chica this never comes to the table alone. Arroz blanco to catch the caldillo and fried plátano macho on the side, the sweet plantain playing against the sharp sauce. That contrast is the point, not a decoration.
- •Buy more yuca than you think you need. Once you cut away the skin and the woody core you lose about a third of the weight. Work with it the day you buy it. Grated raw yuca oxidizes and grays fast, and a small squeeze of lime worked into the masa keeps it pale if you have to hold it an hour.
Advance Preparation
- •The caldillo can be made up to 2 days ahead and refrigerated. The flavor only deepens. Reheat gently and loosen with a splash of water, since it thickens in the cold.
- •Fry the tortitas as close to serving as you can, because that is when they're crisp. If you must work ahead, fry them, cool them on a rack, and re-crisp in a hot oven (400F) for a few minutes before bathing them in the warm caldillo.
- •Grate, squeeze, and mix the yuca masa a few hours ahead if needed. Press plastic wrap to the surface and refrigerate, and work a squeeze of lime into it to slow the graying.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 425g)
Calories
630 calories
Total Fat
28 g
Saturated Fat
13 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
13 g
Cholesterol
85 mg
Sodium
900 mg
Total Carbohydrates
84 g
Dietary Fiber
7 g
Sugars
12 g
Protein
13 g
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