Salvadorans have a knack for turning ordinary ingredients into extraordinarily flavorful dishes. National foods manage to be exotic and traditional at the same time.

By John Jacobs

Walk into a Salvadoran restaurant and there is one thing you can count on – color! There is going to be colorful décor serving as the perfect showcase for color-rich meals. The food in El Salvador is a bit traditional, a bit Spanish, a bit exotic, a bit Bohemian (informal), and a bit unique, with each dish reflecting these five qualities to some degree. The national fare of pupusas (stuffed flatbread) and casamiento (black beans and rice) may sound a bit ordinary at first, but don’t be deceived. The flatbread fillings and spiced up black beans and rice prove Salvadorans regularly turn ordinary ingredients into extraordinary dishes.

Traditional foods in El Salvador, routinely served at family meals and by street vendors, would be considered exotic home cooking in many other locales. For example, platanosfritos (fried plantains) is a common side dish, but in the U.S., it’s usually found on the dessert menus of expensive restaurants.

The national dish in El Salvador is the pupusa, a thick tortilla stuffed with meat and cheese and grilled over high heat with very little fat. The filling is what makes it so special. Imagine biting into a hot, thick grilled pupusa stuffed with seasoned pulled pork and served with curtido (pickled cabbage), presenting a contrasting mix of flavors that are rich and tangy at the same time. The pork stuffing is tantalizing with its unusual array of spices that include garlic, oregano and cinnamon blended with diced jalapeno and fresh diced tomatoes. More spices are added to the pickled cabbage, including cumin, coriander, oregano and red pepper flakes. Stuff the grilled flatbread with the pork filling, add a side dish of cabbage, and you have a healthy, delightful dish that is traditional, Spanish, exotic, Bohemian and unique.

Salvadorans like cabbage, and curtido is actually a slaw made with chopped cabbage, onions, peppers and carrots, mixed together and pickled in vinegar and sometimes served with salsa. While pupusa is standard fare when filled with a variety of cheeses, meats and refried beans, casamiento (black beans and rice) is just as popular. Beans are often cooked with cloves and onions and a host of spices like marjoram, chives and thyme and then delicately mixed with cooked rice. Black beans are incredibly nutritious and contain high amounts of fiber, folate, manganese, protein, magnesium, vitamin B1, phosphorus and iron. In other words, you can order casamiento guilt-free while enjoying the expert mixing of spices for which the Salvadoran cuisine is noted.

Tinted Red Dough, Palm Flowers, Colorful Fruits and Vegetables

The mainstay foods are so healthy and nutritious that it is tempting to stop right there, but doing so will deprive connoisseurs of treats like the pastelito. Masa is tinted red with paprika; made into a dough pastry shell; and then filled with diced potatoes, string beans and chopped meat, or other ingredients of the cook’s choice. The meat pie is then fried in oil. You have to just forget the diet sometimes and enjoy the meal.

However, if you insist on avoiding all fried foods, Salvadoran cuisine dishes up many other options like churrasco, (Salvadorian flank steak), polloencebollado (chicken cooked with onions), caldo de pescado (fish stew), or ceviche de camarones (lime-cooked shrimp). During the holidays, Salvadorans eat PavoSalvadoreño, which is roasted turkey served with a rich sauce made of pureed vegetables and spices that were cooked in the pan with the turkey. Of course, seafood is popular since the Pacific Ocean forms a southern coastline and the Gulf of Fonseca is on the east side.

The variety of foods in El Salvador and Salvadoran restaurants offers something for every taste. For the unusual, try pacalla, which are battered palm flowers that are deep fried and usually served with tomato sauce. Tortillas and black bean dishes get a lot of attention, but Salvadoran cuisine incorporates a rich variety of vegetables and fruits in every meal. For example, it is common to scramble eggs with vegetables for breakfast to make huevospicados or to serve fruit as the dessert. Soups (sopas) and stews (caldos) are local favorites, and vegetables like green beans, onions, and green or hot peppers are added to pots and everything is allowed to simmer for hours.

In El Salvador, a trip to a market like Mercado Merliot in San Salvador (or any of the other markets) is a colorful feast for the eyes with rows of baskets filled with fruits and vegetables. You’ll find a gorgeous arrangement of papaya, mangoes, onions, enormous carrots, maracuya (passion fruit), melons, onions, zapote, yucca, squash and more. Markets like this one are found all over El Salvador, and arrangements reflect the nation’s love of color.

So … So … Unique!

Every culture has a fondness for desserts because humans need them to happily survive. El Salvador is no different in terms of having an appreciation for sweets, but it is different in that the desserts carry the same theme as the national foods by using many of the same ingredients. For example, the Quesadilla Salvadoreña (no relation to the Mexican quesadilla) is a pound cake that is traditionally made with Salvadoran queso fresco (fresh farm cheese) or a substitute cheese. Pastelitos are turned into dessert by using a filling made of fruit preserves. Semita is a type of pastry filled with fruit preserves or jam, and the most popular is Semita de Piña, which has a pineapple filling.

You can safely invite friends and family members on a visit to a restaurant serving traditional recipes from El Salvador. The menu items will cover the entire food range from beef and pork to poultry and seafood. It is how the ingredients are mixed and blended together that makes the recipes unique. It would be nice to actually visit El Salvador and try a traditionally made pupusa, requiring the skilled slapping back and forth of the dough in the hands, but that is not always possible. However, most large cities have at least one restaurant serving traditional Salvadoran food.

Next time you are thinking Mexican, try thinking El Salvador instead. One bite and you’ll be saying, “This is so … so … traditional, Spanish, exotic, Bohemian and unique!”