Colombian · soup

Ajiaco Santafereño

Ajiaco Santafereño reads richness 5.7, allium 4.3 and salinity 4.3 on Palate's 0–10 flavor X-ray — a Colombian soup, about 2 hr 25 min. Measured from the recipe itself: ingredients and technique.

The flavor X-ray — six axes, 0–10

The measured notes (of 18)

Richness 5.7 · Allium 4.3 · Salinity 4.3 · Herbaceous 3.6 · Sweetness 3.5 · Umami 3.0 · Earthy 1.8 · Nutty 1.6 · Fruity 1.6 · Bitterness 1.1 · Sourness 1.0 · Warm Spice 1.0 · Floral 1.0 · Citrus 0.6

What's in it (14)

Time & effort: about 2 hr 25 min (2 hr 15 min active) · effort: involved

Nutrition (per 100 g, engine-estimated): 93.6 kcal, 5.5 g protein, 3.7 g fat, 10 g carbs

Dietary: Contains meat · Contains dairy — engine-derived; double-check anything allergy-critical.

How it's cooked (8 steps)

  1. Ajiaco is a Bogotá dish and it is built on two things a substitution will destroy: three different potatoes, each doing a different job, and guascas. Guascas is a weed — gallant soldier, in English — that grows in Andean potato fields, and it tastes faintly of artichoke and hay. There is no substitute for it, and any recipe that suggests oregano or thyme instead is not making ajiaco. It is sold dried in small bags in every Colombian grocer and by every Colombian online store, and dried is what most Bogotá cooks use.
  2. Simmer the chicken in the water with the halved onion, garlic, cilantro stems and salt for 40 minutes, skimming the foam in the first ten. Lift the chicken out, cool it enough to handle, and shred the meat off the bone; return the bones to the pot for another 20 minutes, then strain the broth and discard the solids.
  3. Put the floury potato and the papa criolla into the strained broth and simmer 30 minutes. These two are the thickeners: the criolla dissolves almost entirely and turns the soup deep yellow and slightly grainy, and the russet melts into it. If you cannot find fresh criolla, the frozen ones sold in Colombian groceries work perfectly and are what most people in Bogotá use anyway.
  4. Add the sliced papa sabanera and the corn rounds and simmer 20 minutes more. This potato is the one that must stay in slices you can see, so add it late and do not stir hard after this point.
  5. Add the guascas in the last 10 minutes only. Boiled long, they turn bitter and grassy; added late, they perfume the whole pot. Taste and correct the salt — the broth should be assertive, since the cream is about to soften it.
  6. Return the shredded chicken to heat through for 5 minutes. The soup should be thick enough that a spoon stands up slowly in it but still be a soup, not a purée; loosen with hot water if it has gone past that.
  7. Serve in deep bowls and let each person add their own cream, capers and avocado at the table. That last part is not a garnish convention, it is how the dish is eaten — the cold cream and the sharp capers against the hot starchy broth is the whole point.
  8. Substitutions: red-skinned waxy potato can stand in for the papa sabanera; 60 g fresh can stand in for the dried guascas.

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Every number above is Palate's engine-measured estimate, computed from this recipe's ingredients and techniques — not human-tasted ratings or reviews.