Table & Traditions Recipes, rituals & real meals
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World Classics

The Americas

Mexico, Peru & the American South

The Americas are where old-world technique met new-world ingredients — chilies, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, lime. It runs from the deep chili sauces of Mexico and the bright citrus-cured seafood of Peru to the patient, place-rooted cooking of the American South.

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Guatemala — no recipes yet Cuba — no recipes yet Dominican Rep. — no recipes yet Ecuador — no recipes yet Bolivia — no recipes yet Chile — no recipes yet Uruguay — no recipes yet Paraguay — no recipes yet United States 4 recipes Mexico 3 recipes Jamaica 1 recipe Colombia 1 recipe Venezuela 1 recipe Peru 1 recipe Brazil 2 recipes Argentina 2 recipes

Every recipe

15 recipes in this region.

Four thick pale-gold arepas on a dark rustic wooden board, the one in front split open like a pocket and packed with shredded chicken and diced avocado reina pepiada filling, the others whole and showing their speckled griddled corn crusts, with two lime wedges, a small dark bowl of diced avocado, scattered coriander leaves and a rumpled linen cloth alongside in warm side light.
Vegan

The Andean valleys and Caribbean coast shared by Venezuela and Colombia — Timoto-Cuica, Cumanagoto and Muisca corn country · Venezuelan & Colombian

Arepas — Griddled Corn Cakes from Venezuela and Colombia

Three ingredients, four hundred years older than either country that argues over them: masarepa, warm water and salt, griddled to a crust and baked through until they sound hollow. The trick is that masarepa is pre-cooked corn flour and nothing else will do.

EasyBreadsNaturally gluten-free

Overhead view of a stack of about eight freshly made corn tortillas in a round woven basket lined with a red-and-white striped cloth, their pale cream surfaces mottled with amber and dark brown comal blisters, on a weathered dark wood table with a cast-iron tortilla press at the upper left, small terracotta bowls of chunky red salsa and green salsa, a lime wedge and scattered dried corn kernels around them.
Vegan

Central and southern Mexico — the Michoacán highlands and the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca, the old heartland of the milpa, with the same bread eaten daily across Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras · Mexican

Corn Tortillas (Tortillas de Maíz)

The foundational bread of Mesoamerica: nixtamalized corn ground to a soft masa, pressed thin and cooked dry on a hot comal until it puffs into two paper-thin leaves — with both the 40-minute masa harina route and the overnight whole-corn one.

IntermediateBreadsThree ingredients

Overhead view of a Brazilian feijoada completa spread on a dark weathered wooden table — a wide black cast-iron pot brimming with glossy dark beans in a thick brown broth, studded with chunks of braised pork and scattered with chopped parsley, ringed by white bowls of fluffy white rice, dark sautéed collard greens, sandy toasted farofa crumbs, green beans, golden plantain chips and slices of orange, with a small bottle of pepper sauce and a rumpled linen cloth at the edge in warm natural light.

Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais — the black-bean south-east of Brazil, where the *feijoada completa* table took its modern form · Brazilian

Feijoada Completa — Rio's Saturday Pot of Black Beans and Pork

Brazil's national dish is a long, patient pot of black beans and salted, smoked and fresh pork, eaten at lunchtime on a Saturday with rice, garlicky collards, farofa and sliced orange. Here is how the whole table comes together, and why each part of it is there.

IntermediateMainsSoak overnight

Overhead view of Jamaican jerk chicken on crumpled brown butcher paper over a wooden board: eight bone-in pieces with glossy mahogany skin blackened and blistered at the edges, scattered with sliced scallion and fresh thyme, a small dark bowl of thick red jerk sauce at the lower left, a mound of steamed white rice flecked with allspice and scallion at the right ringed by golden fried festival dumplings, lime wedges above and below the rice, and a long red chilli laid across the top corner of the dark wooden table.

Portland parish, Jamaica — the Blue Mountain and John Crow interior of the Windward Maroons, and the roadside pits of Boston Bay · Jamaican

Jamaican Jerk Chicken — Pimento Smoke, Scotch Bonnet and the Maroons' Fire

Real jerk is not a sauce you brush on at the end. It is a wet pimento-and-Scotch-bonnet paste worked into slashes cut to the bone, then smoke-roasted slowly over allspice wood until the skin blisters black. Here is how to get genuinely close on a home grill — and why low heat, not high, is the whole trick.

IntermediateMainsGrilled