With Thanksgiving right around the corner, celebrate with some authentic Mexican fall recipes.
For most people growing up in a Latino community and family, food plays an essential role in their culture. They use food as a way to celebrate love, customs and family. Growing up, my mother made dishes that held our family’s history. Each one has its own special story. When I was younger, my mom would be in the kitchen during the colder seasons, making her sacred recipes to bring warmth to our stomachs and our souls. I want to share those cultural recipes and that warm feeling with all of you with the three recipes below.
I want to share those cultural recipes and that warm feeling with you all in a three-part series leading up to Thanksgiving. Below we have the second recipe, and next week, I’ll have the last recipe to share with you all, so be on the lookout! Here is the link to the first recipe in case you missed it.
My Mother’s Champurrado (Mexican Hot Chocolate)
For most Americans, the second it becomes cold enough to start craving warm drinks they usually get Hot Cocoa to satisfy that need. However, in Mexican culture, we tend to reach for Champurrado, a thick atole chocolate-based warm drink that the Aztec people originally created during 450 BC. Growing up, my mother would make this drink for us when it was gloomy and raining outside. The chocolate and cinnamon boiling aroma would fill up our home with such warmth and a solid sweet and subtle spicy smell. Then we would drink it with Pan Dulce (sweet bread) while we cuddled up with our blankets and watched Charlie Brown holiday movies.
Servings: 5 people
Est time: 25-30 min
Ingredients:
4 cups and ½ of water
2 cinnamon sticks
3 tablespoons of instant corn masa flour
2 cans of 12 oz evaporated milk
1 tablet of Nestle Abuelita Hot Chocolate Drink Tablets
Pinch of salt
½ cup of brown sugar
Ingredients:
- In a medium-sized pot pour 1 cup of water and add 2 cinnamon sticks to the water. Have the heat on low and wait until the water turns light brown.
- Then add 1 tablet of Nestle Abuelita Hot Chocolate Drink Tablets and stir until dissolved.
- Add ¼ teaspoon of salt into the pot.
- Get a blender and add ½ cup of water, then add 3 tablespoons of masa. Blend until turned into a consistency of a smoothie-like liquid with (no lumps!) If too watery add a bit more masa.
- By this time the pot will be simmering lightly, take out 2 cinnamon sticks and throw them away.
- Slowly pour in the masa with water inside from the blender into the pot. Make sure to stir every time you pour a little bit inside the pot. You need to make sure the masa doesn’t turn into lumps.
- Then pour the rest of your remaining water from the original 4 and a ½ cups in the pot, always make sure you are stirring.
- Pour 2 cans of evaporated milk onto the pot and stir.
- Keep on stirring until the champurrado starts boiling; you can increase the heat a bit. (Do not stop stirring!) Masa will burn and get stuck into the pan if left not stirred properly and constantly.
- By that time you can taste for the sweetness, if you want to add more sweetness add the brown sugar little by little until it meets the desired taste.
- After adding sugar keep on stirring until it comes to a full boil and then turn off the heat.
- Champurrado will end up being a thick liquid consistency.
- Enjoy!