You can not talk about Venezuelan cooking without mentioning arepas. Every Venezuelan knows what it feels to wake up every morning with the smell of recently made arepas. This has to be the best feeling of the world.
You can fill your arepa with infinite variety of food. The are lots of possibilities. I guess that is part of the charm of arepas; you can always reinvent the classics and make it better.
In Venezuela we usually eat arepa for the breakfast, but it’s not limited to it. Now, the rest of the world knows arepas as street food and it’s perfectly understandable why.
You can —should— eat it without cutlery and fancy dishes. You only need a napkin and the ability to eat with your hand without making a mess — I don’t have that superpower but I gladly lose my elegance to eat a delicious arepa.
To make a classical Venezuelan arepa you only need to get Harina Pan. Harina Pan is a precooked corn flour that is the base of the arepas dough. In the EU you can get it in any Latin American store. In some states, it’s common to find it in large store chains like Costco in Florida- you know Miami is basically the capital of South America.
After you get your Harina pan, now it is time to make arepa. You can make them fry or grilled. The classical way is grilled in a budare, but you can use a nonstick pan or a grill. In some parts of Venezuela like Margarita or Cumaná, arepas are fried. Usually, they fry it because they fill the arepas with fish — Margarita is an island and Cumaná has access to the Caribbean Sea. For some reason, fried arepas go a lot better with tuna or cazon.
So let’s learn now how Venezuelan cook their favorite food.
Table of Contents
How to make the arepa dough?
I’ve already made an entire article about how to make authentic arepas. But here is the recipe card in case you want to see the recipe instructions.
Arepas
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cup of “Harina pan”
- 4 cups of water
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
- In a bowl add the water, then the corn flour with the salt.
- Mix with your hands until it’s soft and there is no lumps of flour.
- Make balls of dough and the flatten the sides to create the characteristic form of arepas.
- Cook in the cast iron pan for 10 minutes each side over medium heat.
Notes
- If you are going to fry the arepas make a tiny hole in the middle to help the cooking.
- If you are going to fry the arepas use a medium pan with enough oil to cover the arepas. In this way the finish will be even.
These Are the 5 Best Arepa Fillings
These are the top 5 of arepa recipes that every Venezuelan knows and loves.
Reina Pepiada (chicken and avocado)
A creamy mix of shredded chicken with ripped avocado. This is going to be the holy grail for those avocado lovers.
