Colombian sancocho

Ingredients

• Chicken — free-range, in pieces2 kg
• Cassava600 g
• Green plantains2
• Corn cobs3
• Potatoes600 g
• Onions2
• Spring onions5
• Tomatoes4
• Coriander50 g
• Garlic6 clove
• Ground cumin1 tsp
• Achiote1 tsp
• Rice — to serve400 g
• Avocado — to serve2
• Vegetable oil60 ml
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Fry the finely chopped onion, spring onion, tomato and garlic with the cumin and achiote down to a paste.

   20 min

2. 2

   Put the chicken in the pot, add half the hogao and cover with four litres of water.

   10 min

3. 3

   Bring it up, skim and simmer forty minutes.

   45 min

4. 4

   Add the corn in halved cobs and the cassava in large pieces and cook twenty minutes.

   22 min

5. 5

   Add the plantain and potato and cook twenty-five minutes more.

   27 min

6. 6

   Mash a couple of pieces of cassava in the pot to thicken the soup and stir in the remaining hogao.

   8 min

7. 7

   Scatter with coriander and serve with white rice and avocado on separate plates.

   10 min

About the dish

The base of the flavour is hogao, onion, tomato and spring onion fried down to a paste. It is the Colombian sofrito, and without it the broth stays hollow.

The corn goes in as cobs cut in half rather than as kernels. It gives the broth its sweetness over an hour of cooking, and a whole cob is the only way to get it.

Sancocho is cooked over a fire in the yard and eaten on Sunday by a crowd. It is not a weekday soup, and in Colombia portions are counted by the pot rather than the person.

Worth knowing

• — You want a mature hen rather than a broiler. A young bird falls apart in half an hour and gives the broth no body.
• — Strip the woody core from the cassava. It never softens and ruins a whole spoonful.
• — The rice is served separately and added at the bowl. Cooked in the soup it drinks the whole broth within ten minutes.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

20 g

Carbs

68 g

More from Colombia

• Arepas — Cakes of precooked corn flour, griddled and split open to be stuffed.
• Ajiaco bogotano — A chicken soup on three kinds of potato with guascas herb, capers and cream.
• Bandeja paisa — A tray of beans, rice, meat, crackling, egg, arepa, avocado and fried plantain.