TRY IT OUT! Pupusa Recipe from Views On The Road

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In our new feature “Try It Out”, we look at someone else’s recipe which may or may not be allergy-friendly and see what we can do with it. Enjoy!

Every September, our town holds an international food festival. Normally, they set up a bunch of booths and let you buy tickets to spend on food, raffles, and more. It’s an all-day event featuring live music, choreographed dances, and other presentations. We try to experiment with different options every year, but no matter what, we always make sure to stop by the El Salvador booth for pupusas.

This year being what it was, the event had to be scaled back to a “drive-thru” format, but we still got our pupusas. As is usually the case when we get any kind of “take-out” food, we first gave the kids something safe for all of them to eat, then ate our food separately. But then we started to wonder: could pupusas be done in an allergy-friendly way? As it turns out, the answer is yes!

Essentially, a pupusa is simply a bit of rolled dough made of corn flour, water, and salt, then filled with whatever you want (depending on how traditional you want to be), and lightly pan-fried. Usually the filling includes some kind of melted cheese, but because it’s not absolutely crucial to the makeup of the dish, it can easily be substituted out. While we still wouldn’t be comfortable getting pupusas from a restaurant that doesn’t advertise itself as allergy-friendly, it’s extremely easy to make an allergy-safe version at home.

Now, when we say “corn flour” we don’t mean straight-up cornmeal, but a specially treated version known as masa harina — which isn’t actually a very descriptive name, since it literally just means “dough flour”. But it’s different from cornmeal. It is basically a dehydrated “instant dough” — just add water! It’s also treated with a lime-based solution of some sort. One of the most popular brands, which you’ve probably walked past countless times in the grocery store, is Maseca.

If you’ve never worked with corn masa before, don’t worry — it’s extremely easy. You basically just combine it with water to get the consistency you want, add some salt for flavor, shape it, and fry it. It’s naturally pretty non-stick as long as you don’t add too much water, so it works great on any decently seasoned cast iron surface. In addition to pupusas, you can easily make your own corn tortillas with it.

But for now, let’s focus on pupusas. We learned how to make them by watching this excellent video from Views On The Road. They first make the cooked pork filling and the curtido, a slaw of sorts which traditionally goes with the dish. If you don’t need to know how to make the filling, skip to 8:24 to see how the pupusas are formed and cooked.

Pupusas by Views On The Road

The video will help you learn the technique for rolling and stuffing them — it’s a little tricky at first, but it doesn’t take too long get the hang of it. The recipe is extremely scalable; just use about a 3:2 cup ratio of Maseca to water. And for every 3 cups of Maseca I would use about 1 tsp salt. (That’s a little more than they recommend here, but I think it tastes better — but it is just for taste, so do what you want.)

Now about that vegan cheese. Luckily, these days, you can find multiple brands of vegan cheese in most grocery stores. Many of the most popular ones don’t include nuts, but they do sometimes, so be careful. (It’s one of the best ways to imitate that certain “cheesy” flavor, so it’s a logical choice, but not a safe one for us.) They’ve actually gotten these to taste pretty good. I do still love dairy cheese, but if you gave me one of these and told me it was some obscure variant from France or something, I’d probably believe you.

Regarding this recipe specifically, we’ve noticed that some brands of shredded vegan cheese (such as Daiya) are a little on the stiff side. I would recommend crumbling up the cheese shreds with your fingers for a bit, in order to prevent them from tearing through the surface of the pupusas. That part is always a bit of a challenge, especially if you’re tempted to overfill them (we always are). There are some brands of vegan cheese that are a bit softer and less likely to do this, such as Violife and Follow Your Heart.

4 pupusas at a time should fit on a large (12″) cast iron frying pan, although a griddle or something similar is probably best. You don’t need to use too much oil, as you’re not deep-frying these (but hey, don’t let me stop you). A light coating of olive oil will do, although you can us something like pork fat if you’re feeling saucy. As I mentioned earlier, corn masa isn’t too sticky as long as you get the consistency right. In fact, when I make corn tortillas I typically don’t use any oil at all, and they still come up easily.