Yucatecan · Soup
Sopa de Lima
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, real fire that builds and stays, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg turkey thigh, or chicken legs
- 2.5 litres water
- 1 white onion, halved
- 1 head garlic, charred whole on a comal
- 6 g Mexican oregano, toasted
- 6 allspice berries
- 3 whole cloves
- 300 g ripe tomatoes, chopped
- 1 green bell pepper, diced small
- 1 habanero, pricked once with a knife tip
- 2 lima agria (Yucatecan sour lime), or 3 limes plus a wide strip of grapefruit peel
- 6 corn tortillas, cut into 5 mm strips
- 200 ml neutral oil, for frying
- salt
The skills inside
Tortillas on the comalBraisingCharring over open flameSweating aromatics: soft, never brownedSautéing & the shallow fryThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilStraining & passing through a sieveSkimming: foam, fat and a clear brothKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the turkey in the water with half the onion, the charred garlic, oregano, allspice and cloves at a bare tremble for 1 hour, skimming, until the meat pulls away from the bone. Strain and keep 2 litres of broth. 60 min
- Sweat the remaining onion with the bell pepper and tomato in a spoonful of oil until the tomato has gone jammy and the pan smells sweet rather than green, then add the broth, the shredded meat and the pricked habanero and simmer 10 minutes. 10 min
- Fry the tortilla strips at 180 C (355 F) until they stop bubbling and turn pale gold, then drain on paper. Baked strips dissolve in the bowl.
- Pull the pot off the heat, drop in a thin coin of lima peel with no white pith attached, cover and steep 3 minutes, then fish the peel out and stir the juice in. 3 min
- Ladle over the strips and carry it to the table at once, before they soften.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tortillas on the comal 27 recipes
- It puffs. On the second turn the tortilla lifts into a dome as the trapped water flashes to steam and splits the two faces apart; a tortilla that never puffs was pressed too thick, cooked too cool, or turned too often.
- Freckled, not blackened: small brown spots across a pale field. An evenly browned tortilla has been on too long and will be a cracker by the time it reaches the table.
- It folds without cracking while warm, and still folds after five minutes under a cloth. A tortilla that splits along the fold has lost too much water on the comal.
- The edges are unbroken and roughly round, with no ragged fringe: a fringed edge means the masa was too dry when it was pressed, and no amount of heat will fix it afterwards.
- It smells of toasted corn rather than of scorch or of raw lime. Raw lime means the nixtamal was under-rinsed; scorch means the comal was above the working heat.
Where it goes wrong The masa was too dry or the comal too cool. A dry masa cracks at the edge on pressing and cannot generate the steam that puffs it; a cool comal dries the tortilla through before the water can flash, so it leaves the heat stiff, pale and already stale.
Charring over open flame 31 recipes
- The surface met the fiercest heat available (flame, a broiler, or bare hot metal) with nothing between them, and it shows as true blistering and blackening rather than gentle, even browning.
- The char matches the surface’s fate: where it will be eaten, black sits in patches over deep colour with every face having had its turn, and where the skin is to be peeled away, it may go to an even black, because the char there works on the flesh below and then leaves with the skin.
- It smells of smoke and toasted surface with no acrid edge that stings the nose: acrid means it went past, and acrid does not cook out.
- Just under the char it is cooked (softened, steaming, collapsed, or puffed, whichever the dish wants) because the flame did the surface and the trapped heat did the rest.
- A taste carries the smoke without mouthfuls of ash: the black that flakes away is a seasoning, not a layer.
Where it goes wrong It was left on one face too long or held too close, so one side carbonised to ash while the rest stayed raw, and the smell turned acrid, which follows the dish through every later step and cannot be seasoned away.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.