Making an Ajiaco

This is part of my Challenge to make 26 things before 2017 ends.

The Ajiaco: one of the most traditional dishes of Colombia’s cuisine.

This dish is heavily served in Bogotá (the capital of Colombia), a thick hot soup (perfect for its cold days), made out of three types of potatoes, chicken, corn and the Galinsoga parviflora herb (called Guasca in Colombia).

There are tons of recipes on-line, but this type of dish has a strong root in families, thus I’m adapting the traditional recipe of my Auntie Cristina (hoping she won’t be highly disappointed at me afterwards).

The ingredients

The main ingredient of the Ajiaco are the potatoes, in Colombia (and generally in South America) we have many different types. In Europe you could find the two most common ones by its function: boil-like (normally smaller and soft) and fry-like potatoes (normally the largest and hardest ones), however the star potato is the creole potato.

The Papa Criolla (Solanum phureja) or creole potato is a yellow and small potato, very popular in Colombia. It is used in soups and stews, mashed, boiled, baked or fried and they are delicious. In Europe you mostly can buy them frozen or preserved in a jar. Normally it is not required to be peeled, and are quite quick to cook.

It would be quite difficult to get Guasca here in Spain (right now I’m spending holidays in Barcelona with my family), even harder back in Berlin… coriander might be an option, but my wife has a strong dislike of it (See this article on how some people strongly rejects it).

In my family we normally serve the Ajiaco with avocado and white rice as side dish, and once done to mix in the soup pickled capers and milk cream.

  • One and a half chicken breast
  • 500 grams of creole potato (you don’t have to peel it, which is great)
  • 500 grams of Sabanera potato, or find one normally used to fry
  • 500 grams of Pastusa potato, or find one normally used to boil
  • Corn
  • Avocado
  • Pickled capers
  • Milk cream
  • White rice
  • Guasca (if you are lucky), else coriander

How to prepare

This is my adapted version of my Aunt’s explanation, plus some tips from Alo.

The potato mash-up

I put the hardest-to-boil potatoes in a separate pot, with a pinch of salt and garlic - the water should reduce and a thick soup should remain. Peel-off the potatoes and cover with water (up to two-fingers of water level above the potatoes). Use a high fire.

The flavor pot

On another pot, brown the chicken breast (in chunks) on olive oil, with chopped garlic, salt, pepper and a little coriander. When the chicken is white-ish then add the chopped onion and stir - keep a medium fire.

Add the creole potato to the pot (also the corn in 3 cm slices but I didn’t had any), stir a bit and after 3-5 minutes add enough water to cover the chicken - raise the fire to high.

When the mixture is boiling, wait another few minutes and take the chicken aside, and rip it apart (brutal!) to shreds, save it for later. Let the pot keep boiling, it is important we save the water (stew) for later.

Mix the fun

Dump the flavor pot content in the potato mash-up, keep cooking and control the thickness by adding more water as required (in my case it wasn’t necessary).

In a separate pot boil some rice as side dish, prepare the avocado as you like (I normally just slice it and add some salt and lime on top).

The Guasca you should normally put it at the end, submerge (wrapped inside a cloth napkin) for 5 minutes or so - I didn’t had any (quite difficult to find in Europe), hence why I used coriander.

It takes a while to boil and thicken, be patient (I wasn’t).

Tip from my wife: to prevent the soup from keep boiling and thicken too much, pour half-glass of cold water.

The result

Add some shredded chicken on top and serve with rice and avocado, add milk cream and capers as you like.

Retrospectively, I should have smashed the potatoes (or something else) to avoid having big potato chunks, however I like it this way as well. I greatly missed using corn, but the taste was as expected - I hope to improve the recipe, specially if my family comes over and supervises all the way.