Peruvian Noche Buena feasts have some staple guarantees: a roasted turkey, Panettone, and hot chocolate made with Peruvian chocolate bars and evaporated milk. While most Latin American countries have their version of a tamal on the Christmas Eve dinner table, in Peru and other Andean countries—and in my Peruvian American family—its lesser-known food cousin, the humita, also makes an appearance.
Humitas and tamales are often said in the same breath—both are labor-intensive, corn-based dough dishes stuffed with various fillings. At first glance, they look pretty much the same. However, once you break their differences, you can see how their subtle changes make two different dishes. Humitas are made with fresh young white Peruvian corn with large kernels called choclo, ground up or milled, while tamales are made with ripe choclo that is often already dried and needs to be rehydrated to then mill, or can be made with cornmeal made from the choclo.
Depending on the region, humitas can be made sweet due to the more delicate notes of the corn, with added raisins or cheese, or can be made savory by adding pork and vegetables. Tamales, however, will always be savory, often filled with chicken or pork, and the masa (corn dough) gets spiced in the cooking stage, resulting in Peruvian tamales displaying a more yellow-orange hue, while humitas trend toward white to yellow.
Both take long processes to make, as they require you to make the dough and the filling separately, then they are combined and wrapped together in corn husks or banana leaves for further integration into one cohesive pocket in a big steaming pot. Even though they can both be found at Peruvian breakfast and lunch tables during any time of the year, the multistep process of both dishes makes them popular during the holidays when families are together. You can often find assembly lines of cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, all gathered at their assigned stations.
My paternal grandmother—who is from the province of Chiclayo in the department of Lambayeque—had humitas for Christmastime for as long as she can remember. She recalls that her own grandmother would make them, stuffing them with ground chicharrones (fried pork). My father claims he can remember eating them during the holidays since he was at least five years old.
Roughly fifty-five years later, now in the United States, my brother’s wife, Stephanie, is now the designated leader of the Christmas humitas. A Colombian American who was thrust into the world of Peruvian cuisine when joining our family, she has since mastered several traditional recipes. Though some original Peruvian recipes are hard to make in the United States due to the availability of ingredients, Stephanie puts in many rounds of experimentation and research to find the right shortcuts and substitutes to make dishes taste “just like home,” with the right amount of originality to make the dishes hers.
A few years ago, before my mother passed away, Stephanie learned how to make humitas from her, who, in Stephanie’s words, made them “the best.” Turns out, the recipe my mother followed is the one my paternal grandmother gave her. So while my mother is no longer here to guide her, Stephanie can always call on my grandmother for help with measurements and tips over the phone. Unknowingly, Stephanie has contributed to this serendipitous cycle of in-laws making humitas.
In the past five years, Stephanie has solidified this holiday tradition here in our south Florida home—forging her own path to keeping legacies alive and cultivating her culinary curiosity one year (and WhatsApp call) at a time.
Peruvian Humitas
Ingredients
10 fresh cobs Peruvian choclo
1 pound pork
1 large red onion, julienned
1 tablespoon ají panca paste
1 tablespoon ají amarillo paste
2 whole ajíes amarillo, julienned and deseeded
Vinegar
Salt
3 hardboiled eggs, chopped (optional)
6 black olives, chopped and pitted (optional)
Dried corn husks
Preparation
Before starting the cooking process, soak the dried corn husks in warm water for at least 10 minutes in a bowl so they soften.
Prepare the masa: remove the choclo kernels from the cob and gather them in a bowl for grinding, or a grain grinder or food processor, and grind until it becomes a smooth paste. Add the released fat/lard from the cooking pork (see below). Transfer the mixture to a pot on low heat, stirring slowly but constantly until it starts to form a dough texture. Once it looks cohesive, turn off the heat and let it cool.
Prepare the filling: in a pan, cook the sliced red onions, ají amarillo, eggs, and olives in the ají panca and amarillo paste, vinegar, and salt, and sauté until all ingredients are incorporated. In another pan, cook the pork in its own fat until crispy and add to the onion mixture. Remember, the fat released from cooking the pork should be added to the masa (see above). The meat and vegetables together make the filling of the humitas.
With both components made, it is time to assemble. Take two corn husks, one on top of another, and ladle two spoonfuls of the masa on top. Then ladle one spoonful of the filling in the center of the masa. Fold the husks into a rectangular shape, with the filling completely enclosed, and use aluminum foil to reinforce it, along with cooking twine. Make as many as you can.
Once you’re done building the humitas, cover the bottom of a large pot with the remaining corn husk leaves—this is so the humitas do not touch the water. Fill the pot with two cups of water, or enough to cover the bottom of the pot and not go past the bed of corn husks, and bring it to a boil. Place the humitas in their aluminum foil onto the laid corn husks and let them cook, covered, in the steam for about 20 minutes. Steaming serves as the final act of cohesion for the humita.
You can serve these savory humitas with sarza criolla as garnish: thinly sliced red onions mixed with lime juice, cilantro, salt, pepper, and aji limo or aji rocoto.
Then, ¡a comer! Let’s eat!
Sharon Arana is the festival services coordinator for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Her favorite kind of humita is the humita verde with chicken and no olives.
