The baleada is the most famous Honduran dish and street food staple. I’ll show you the origins of this delicacy as well as how to make baleadas at home.
Keep reading to join me in this delicious lesson of cuisine and history!
A short history of Baleada
We trace back the origins of the baleada to La Ceiba, Honduras. From that Caribbean coast city, the Standard Fruit Co. sent banana shipments to the southern US. A small train connected La Ceiba with the banana plantations.
Standard Fruit Co. was an American company, and the Vaccaro brothers, from Sicily, founded it. Like many Italians, they brought their cuisine and some of its ingredients to La Ceiba.
Among them, wheat flour is essential for making several Italian recipes. As this ingredient became more and more affordable, it started to gain popularity. In the past, corn flour was more popular and people needed to process raw corn in their kitchens to make tortillas. For this reason, wheat flour became more convenient.
In the 1960s, a young single mom started her street-food stall close to the train station. There, she popularized a dish her mom made for her when she was a little girl. Her name was “Doña Tere”, and many people in Honduras credit her from being the first one to popularize the baleadas.
In its first iterations, the dish was simple: a wheat flour tortilla cooked on a comal or skillet, filled with beans, cheese, and Honduran sour cream.
Quickly, travelers and young party-goers made baleadas their favorite thing to eat at many different times of the day.
Half a century later, the baleada has become the Honduran cuisine flagship, and people are able to consume it in many different countries.
Why is it called “baleada”?
There is an urban legend that tells the story of a young woman who was cooking at her food stall when she got shot. Curiously, baleada can be translated as “a woman who got shot.” After she recovered, neighbors would nickname her and her business “baleada.” The popularity of this incident contributed to having the dish called by that name as well. Yet, when I talked with Doña Tere, the self-proclaimed “creator” of the baleadas, she debunked this myth. According to Doña Tere, youngsters asked her about the name of the baleada decades ago. Using a metaphor, she explained why she called it “baleada”, saying “the beans are the bullets, the grated cheese is the powder, and the tortilla is the cartridge,” explained Doña Tere.
In a bowl, mix the tortilla ingredients: flour, warm water, baking soda, one egg, lard, and salt.
Use your hands until you get a soft, sticky, uniform dough. Let it rest for 15 to 20 minutes.
After resting, the dough will be easier to manipulate. Make several dough balls and let them rest for 15 to 20 minutes more.
Stretch the dough using a rolling spin, aiming for a round tortilla. True experts can make a final touch with their hands, but it requires some practice.
Place the round tortilla to cook on a hot pan for 2 minutes or until brown. Try to stack tortillas one over the other. This will let them steam each other and stay soft and warm for a longer time.
To fill the tortillas spread the beans, top with grated cheese and Honduran sour cream. Fold the tortilla, and enjoy a classic baleada!
Video
Notes
Nutrition Facts below refer to a baleada sencilla. Fillings can make a big difference! Both for taste and nutrition 😉
Keyword Baleada
If you liked this baleada recipe, you might like some of my other recipes too.
And remember, if you try this recipe and want to share your pictures, tag me@lacooquetteon Instagram. I’d love to share your pictures on my IG stories.
A baleada is a traditional Honduran dish composed of a flour tortilla, filled with mashed fried red beans (Native from Central or South America), thick cream (mantequilla Hondureña), and crumbled hard salty cheese. It originates from the north coast of Honduras.
Hence the workers started calling the tortilla dish she made 'baleadas' which can loosely be translated to 'the shot woman'. Regardless of its origin, it's a delicious treat and a very common and inexpensive street food item that you must try at least once during your visit.
Baleadas are to Honduras what pupusas are to El Salvador and tacos are to Mexico. A simple baleada consists of a thick flour (though sometimes corn) tortilla that's been put on a charcoal grill.
In Roatan, most baleadas sencillas (simple baleadas, which have just the basic beans, cheese, and cream) will cost you only about $1.50. The ones you load up will cost a bit more – perhaps stretching up to $5 if you jam-pack it like a burrito.
Carneada is considered one of Honduras' national dishes, known as plato típico when served in Honduran restaurants. While it is a type of dish, a carneada or carne asada, like its Mexican counterpart, is usually more of a social event with drinks and music centered on a feast of barbecued meat.
The national dish of Honduras is a mountain of food, the plato típico: a heaping, carb overload of beef, plantains, beans, marinated cabbage, fresh cream, and tortillas. Anafres, a refried black bean and cheese fondue served in a clay pot accompanied by tortilla chips, is the favorite appetizer in the country.
Baleada is one of the most famous Honduran dishes, made of a thick wheat flour tortilla filled with mashed fried beans and, depending who's making them, other ingredients such as cheese, eggs, avocados, hot sauce, and delicious Honduran sour cream known as mantequilla.
Most people eat breakfast around 9:30 a.m.—tortillas with beans and eggs, or an empanada (fried tortillas with cheese or squash or ham inside). Between 9 and noon are the most important working hours.
El Salvador's most notable dish is the pupusa, a thick handmade, tortilla-like corn flour or rice flour flatbread stuffed with cheese, chicharrón (cooked pork meat ground to a paste consistency), refried beans or loroco (a vine flower bud native to Central America).
Honduras is best known for the production and export of agricultural products (coffee, tropical fruits and sugar cane) as well as for its textile industry (maquila). Remittances sent by Hondurans abroad represent 20% of the country's GDP.
Tropical Queso Fresco Hondureño is made from cow's milk and is slightly salty; it's the authentic flavor of Honduras. Its texture is fresh and easy to crumble.
Honduras - Level 3: Reconsider Travel. Reissued with obsolete COVID-19 page links removed. Reconsider travel to Honduras due to crime and kidnapping. Some areas have increased risk.
The cuisine of Honduras depends heavily on ingredients such as fish, beans, seafood, corn and the ever-popular tortilla, plantains, yucca, cabbage, pineapple, plum, papaya, passion fruit, and other regional staples.
Traditional Torrejas in Honduras are made with Pinol (fire roasted fresh corn kernels mixed with cinnamon), which unfortunatley is not found in the united states and the Pinol that is rarely available is not good. Ladyfingers are an acceptable subsitute.
Honduras consists mainly of mountains, with narrow plains along the coasts. A large undeveloped lowland jungle, La Mosquitia lies in the northeast, and the heavily populated lowland Sula valley in the northwest.
Introduction: My name is Barbera Armstrong, I am a lovely, delightful, cooperative, funny, enchanting, vivacious, tender person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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