Curanto (from arn, kurantu 'stony') is a traditional Chilote method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a

earth oven An earth oven, ground oven or cooking pit is one of the simplest and most ancient cooking structures. At its most basic, an earth oven is a pit in the ground used to trap heat and bake, smoke, or steam food. Earth ovens have been used in many pl ...

that is covered with pangue leaves and

turf Sod, also known as turf, is the upper layer of soil with the grass growing on it that is often harvested into rolls. In Australian and British English, sod is more commonly known as ''turf'', and the word "sod" is limited mainly to agricult ...

. The fundamental components are

seafood Seafood is any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish. Shellfish include various species of molluscs (e.g. bivalve molluscs such as clams, oysters and mussels, and cephalopods such as octopus an ...

potato The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern Uni ...

es, along with other traditional preparations from Chiloé Archipelago such as milcao and

chapalele A chapalele is a Chilean dumpling made from boiled potatoes and wheat flour Wheat flour is a powder made from the grinding of wheat used for human consumption. Wheat varieties are called "soft" or "weak" if gluten content is low, and are c ...

, to which are added

meat Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...

sausage A sausage is a type of meat product usually made from ground meat—often pork, beef, or poultry—along with salt, spices and other flavourings. Other ingredients, such as grains or breadcrumbs may be included as fillers or extenders. ...

s and sometimes

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapoda, decapods, ostracoda, seed shrimp, branchiopoda, branchiopods, argulidae, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopoda, isopods, barnacles, copepods, ...

s. It is part of the

Chilean cuisine Chilean cuisine stems mainly from the combination of traditional Spanish cuisine, Chilean Mapuche culture and local ingredients, with later important influences from other European cuisines, particularly from Germany, the United Kingdom and ...

, and it is one of the most recognized dishes of traditional Chilote cuisine whose oldest archaeological remains dates to more than eleven thousand years before present on the Greater Island; there are also finds of lesser data in areas of the coastal edge of the

Reloncaví Sound Reloncaví Sound or ''Seno de Reloncaví'' is a body of water immediately south of Puerto Montt, a port city in the Los Lagos Region of Chile. It is the place where the Chilean Central Valley meets the Pacific Ocean. The Calbuco Archipelago comp ...

, the inland sea of Chiloé and the northern Patagonian channels. In addition, thanks to the migratory flow of the late 19th century and early 20th century, it spread throughout the south of that country. Although its preparation has been documented in various ethnographic accounts since the 16th century, traditionally in the cuisine of the Chiloé archipelago it is prepared outdoors and is called "curanto en hoyo", since it is made in a pit in the ground, about half a meter deep; the bottom is covered with stones, which are heated in a campfire. When they are red hot, the firebrands are removed and the ingredients begin to be placed.

Preparation

The ingredients consist of

shellfish Shellfish is a colloquial and fisheries term for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic invertebrates used as food, including various species of molluscs, crustaceans, and echinoderms. Although most kinds of shellfish are harvested from saltwater environ ...

es, milcao (a kind of potato pancake),

s (a kind of potato dumpling), and vegetables. Curanto sometimes also includes specific types of

fish Fish are Aquatic animal, aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack Limb (anatomy), limbs with Digit (anatomy), digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as we ...

. The varieties of shellfish vary but almejas (

clam Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve molluscs. The word is often applied only to those that are edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the seafloor or riverbeds. Clams have two shel ...

s), cholgas ( ribbed mussels) and picorocos ( giant barnacles) are essential. The quantities are not fixed; the idea is that there should be a little of everything. Each layer of ingredients is covered with nalca (Chilean rhubarb) leaves, or in their absence, with

fig The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia, it has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world ...

leaves or white

cabbage Cabbage, comprising several cultivars of ''Brassica oleracea'', is a leafy green, red (purple), or white (pale green) biennial plant grown as an annual vegetable crop for its dense-leaved heads. It is descended from the wild cabbage ( ''B.&n ...

leaves. All this is covered with wet sacks, and then with dirt and grass chunks, creating the effect of a giant

pressure cooker Pressure cooking is the process of cooking food under high pressure steam and water or a water-based cooking liquid, in a sealed vessel known as a ''pressure cooker''. High pressure limits boiling, and creates higher cooking temperatures whic ...

in which the food cooks for approximately one hour. Curanto can also be prepared in a large stew

pot Pot may refer to: Containers * Flowerpot, a container in which plants are cultivated * Pottery, ceramic ware made by potters * A type of cookware Places * Ken Jones Aerodrome, IATA airport code POT * Palestinian Occupied Territories, the W ...

that is heated over a bonfire or grill or in a pressure cooker. This stewed curanto is called "curanto en olla" or "pulmay" in the central region of Chile.

History

It is believed that this form of preparing foods was native to the "chono" countryside and that, with the arrival of the southern peoples and the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

conquistador Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, ...

s, new ingredients were added until it came to be the curanto that is known today.

References

External links

{{Cuisine of Chile Chilean cuisine Earth oven Chiloé Archipelago Seafood dishes Meat dishes

Preparation

History

See also

References

External links