Bolivian food: the complete guide

Bolivia does not have one cuisine. It has three, and they separate by altitude rather than by border. Understanding that is the whole guide.

Three countries on one plate

The altiplano, above 3,500 metres, cooks with potato in every form — fresh, freeze-dried as chuño, washed white as tunta — with lamb rather than beef, and with yellow chilli. Water boils at around 88 °C up there, so everything takes longer and no sea-level recipe works unadjusted.

The valleys, between 1,800 and 2,800 metres, have maize, wheat, broad beans and fruit for most of the year. Nothing has to be preserved out of necessity, and that permits something rarer higher up: abundance as part of the dish. A silpancho is a full platter. A pique macho is meant to be shared and still leaves leftovers.

The lowlands, in the tropical east, run on rice, cassava, plantain, cheese and river fish. This is a pantry with more in common with Brazil than with La Paz, and it produces dishes that a highlander recognises as Bolivian but not as his own.

The dishes to know

Salteñas

If you eat one Bolivian thing, eat this. A salteña is a baked pastry with soup sealed inside: the filling is set with gelatin overnight and melts back into broth in a very hot oven. Sold from early morning until it runs out, rarely past noon, and eaten standing up.Recipe · What is a salteña?

Pique macho

Beef and sausage stir-fried with onion, tomato and chilli, piled over thick-cut fries and topped with boiled egg. It arrives in one dish at the centre of the table and everyone eats from it. From Cochabamba, and never plated individually.Recipe

Silpancho

Rice, fried potato, a beef schnitzel pounded thinner than the plate and a fried egg with a runny yolk. The proof that in this cuisine you do not choose a side dish, you add them up.Recipe

Sopa de maní

Peanut soup, and the most badly copied Bolivian dish in the world. What defines it is one gesture: raw peanuts blended with stock and simmered slowly until they stop tasting raw. Made with peanut butter it becomes satay, which is a different thing entirely.

Chairo

The altiplano soup, and the clearest demonstration of what chuño does here: it appears twice, in chunks and ground to thicken the broth. With two meats and enough vegetables that nothing needs to follow it.

Majadito

Rice cooked with dried salted beef and annatto, served with fried plantain and a fried egg. The lowland dish that proves Santa Cruz cooks from a different pantry.

Chicharrón

A technique rather than a recipe: pork simmered in chicha until the liquid evaporates and the meat ends up frying in its own fat. Two stages, one pot, no added oil, two hours that cannot be shortened.

Llajua

Not optional. Tomato, locoto chilli and fresh herb ground together and served on the side, so each person sets their own heat. It is what balances a cuisine of long simmering, frying and starch. Made fresh every time: by the next day it is no longer llajua.

Bolivian food has a clock

This is the part most guides miss. Many Bolivian dishes belong to a specific hour and barely exist outside it.

• Before dawn: fricasé, a pork broth with yellow chilli, eaten by people leaving a party and by people starting work.
• Breakfast: api, a thick hot purple-maize drink, with a fried cheese pastry.
• Mid-morning: salteñas. Until they run out.
• Lunch, 1 to 2 pm: the main meal, soup and a second course, and it is large.
• Mid-afternoon: tucumanas, fried pastries served with three sauces on top.
• After dark: anticuchos, beef heart skewers from charcoal carts.

Ordering a fricasé at three in the afternoon is not forbidden. It is just odd, in the same way that pique macho for breakfast is odd.

Cooking it where you live

Five or six ingredients are the obstacle, not the techniques. Thesubstitutes guide lists what to use instead of each one and what changes as a result.

And if you would rather eat than cook, therestaurant directory lists verified places, one phone call at a time.

A note on this page

The full site is in Spanish and has considerably more: around eighty recipes, an ingredient glossary, a festival calendar and regional guides. If you read Spanish, start atplatos típicos de Bolivia.