By Christina Morales, The New York Times
At many restaurants throughout the United States, customers can count on a bread basket. But in New Mexico, those baskets often hold sopapillas, pillows of fried dough meant to be dipped into spicy dishes like green chile enchiladas or drizzled with honey and eaten as a dessert.
Sopapillas, also spelled sopaipillas, are typically made with just a handful of pantry ingredients. These versatile golden brown puffs can be stuffed with meat like carne adovada, or topped with red and green chile sauces. And yes, customers can grab another to eat with their stuffed sopapilla.
“It was a staple food,” said Janet Malcom, the kitchen manager of Rancho de Chimayó, a restaurant in Chimayó, New Mexico. Malcom sometimes helps make the sopapillas served with entrees there. Sopapillas conjure memories of her grandmother’s. “There were sopapillas or tortillas on the table for every meal,” she said.
The dish has roots in both Native American and Hispanic culture; the sopapilla is closely related to fry bread that’s served in many Native American communities. Hispanic communities were often located right next to Indigenous ones, and they exchanged some traditions, said Lois Ellen Frank, a chef, food historian and owner of Red Mesa Cuisine, which provides catering services with an educational bent in the Santa Fe area.
“There was a lot of weaving, some of the cultural traditions are inseparable or the same,” Frank said.
At Sadie’s of New Mexico in Albuquerque, sopapillas have been served for 70 years. The restaurant now serves at least 1,500 a day. Sadie Koury, who was born in 1914 to Lebanese parents and raised in New Mexico, learned how to make the sopapillas from the Indigenous people that lived nearby. The family used sopapillas, rather than pita, with their hummus.
The restaurant continues the tradition of giving out sopapillas with entrees, but it also serves them in place of a burger bun and in dessert sundaes.
“I can’t ever remember not ever having a sopapilla or tortilla in front of me,” said William R. Stafford, Koury’s nephew and an owner of the restaurant.
In Texas Roadhouse restaurants, meals begin with warm rolls with honey butter. George Gundrey serves the sopapilla at Tomasita’s locations in Albuquerque and Santa Fe in a similar vein with the same kind of butter made with local honey.
Though he can’t remember exactly where his mother got the idea for this pairing, Gundrey thinks the inspiration likely came from a Southern restaurant she visited that served bread with the sweet spread.
“It cools off your tongue,” Gundrey said of the sopapilla, “and it feels great after eating spicy chiles.”
At El Patio in Albuquerque, the sopapillas are round and fluffy, and the recipe is his grandfather’s, said David Sandoval, an owner. He enjoys eating it as a dessert.
“I’ll pour some honey on it and down the throat it goes,” he said.
Johnny Gabaldon developed his recipe as a chef in St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, when he was missing the food of his native Sante Fe. He uses a lot of yeast to help the dough rise faster and sweetened condensed milk to make the sopapillas soft and supple.
“We judge restaurants on whether their sopapillas are good,” Gabaldon said. “That’s really going to make or break our decision.”
Recipe: Sopapillas
By Farideh Sadeghin
Crispy, golden-brown pillows that are sweet or savory, sopapillas are a traditional New Mexican fried dough made with only five ingredients: flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and shortening. The dish is rooted in the American Southwest, where Hispanic, Spanish and Native American cultures converge. Sopapillas, also spelled sopaipillas, can be stuffed with braised meat, New Mexican chiles or cheese and served as a meal or snack, or the entire pastry can be drizzled with honey for dessert, as it is here. To ensure maximum puffiness, roll the dough out thinly, and the oil should be very hot. Sopapillas are best served right after frying.
Yield: About 18 sopapillas
Total time: About 2 hours
Ingredients
- 4 cups/480 grams all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal)
- 4 tablespoons/56 grams shortening or lard, softened
- Vegetable oil, for frying (about 4 cups)
- Honey, for serving
Preparation
1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt until combined. Using your fingers, mix in the shortening until there are pea-sized crumbles. Add 1 cup room-temperature water, then knead the mixture in the bowl until it comes together. (If the dough feels dry, add a little more water, 1 tablespoon at a time.) Turn the dough onto a clean surface and continue kneading until it’s smooth and slightly elastic, 6 to 8 minutes. Divide the dough into two balls and return them to the bowl. Cover with a clean dish towel and let it rest for 1 hour at room temperature.
2. In a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot, heat 3 inches of oil over medium-high heat until a deep-fry thermometer reads 375 degrees. Working with one ball of dough at a time on a clean work surface, roll it into a 13-inch circle (about 1/8-inch-thick). Cut the circle into 9 (4-inch) squares; some of the squares will have rounded corners, and that’s OK. Cover the squares with a clean, damp cloth, then repeat rolling and cutting the remaining dough.
3. Line a plate with paper towels. Working in batches to avoid crowding, fry the dough, about 2 at a time, flipping once with a slotted spoon, until golden and puffed, 2 to 3 minutes total. Transfer to the paper towel-lined plate and repeat with the remaining dough, adjusting the heat as necessary to maintain the temperature. Serve hot, drizzled with honey.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
