Plant-based Venezuelan-style arepas // A grandchild in my kitchen

Plant-based Venezuelan-style arepas // A grandchild in my kitchen

🌱🥙🇻🇪 Grandma Sita learns with Angélica how to make delicious Venezuelan-style arepas filled with colorful sautéed vegetables. This yummy plant-based recipe is inspired by the popular “Venezuelan Arepas” which are the sandwiches of South America.

😋 You can eat them with whatever filling you think makes a great combination, but don’t forget to cook up some complementary plant-based food like salad.

🧓🏻💛 Grandma Sita’s tip: The key to perfectly crisp-on-the-outside, tender-and-fluffy-on-the-inside arepas is to fry arepas in batches, about 10 minutes per side to form a crust and to ensure the centers are cooked through.

➡️ Arepas are versatile, naturally vegan, and welcome every stuffing you can imagine. Maize tortillas constitute a staple of our Latin American cuisine. You can find tortillas in different shapes, colors, and flavors, as there are more than twelve thousand types of corn. The Colombian and Panamanian arepas versions are thinner and work better to have a bite as you munch them with something else, like french fries. 

🤗🌎 Grandma Sita looks forward to the weekends because that’s the time she invites a grandchild into her kitchen to cook popular dishes from their countries and together get inspired to twist them into delicious new plant-based meals. Sustainability tastes great everywhere! 

Mix the pre-cooked cornmeal, water, and salt, in a bowl. Cook arepas on a grill on medium heat for five minutes on each side.
 Cut arepas halfway and start filling them with colorful sautéed vegetables. This combination is magnificent!
This plant-based Arepas recipe will immediately gain a place in your heart and kitchen.

INGREDIENTS

*For the arepas (10 units approx.)
2 cups Harina P.A.N (pre-cooked white corn flour)
2 and 1/2 cups warm water
1 tsp sea salt
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
Tip: if avoiding oil, just omit it and be sure your pan is non-stick.
*For the filling
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
Half broccoli, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
A bunch of asparagus, chopped
Salt & back pepper, to taste

METHOD

*For the arepas
1. Stir water and salt together in a medium bowl; gradually stir in cornmeal with your fingers until the mixture forms a soft, moist, malleable dough.
2. Knead for 2 minutes and let it rest for another 5 minutes.
3. Divide the dough into balls, around 10 units, and flatten them with your hands until you get discs.
4. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat; fry arepas in batches, about 10 minutes per side to form a crust and to ensure the centers are cooked through.
Tip: The key to perfectly crisp-on-the-outside, tender-and-fluffy-on-the-inside arepas!
5. Transfer cooked arepas to a paper towel-lined plate to drain until cool enough to handle.
*For the filling
1. Wash all vegetables well and chop them.
2. Heat vegetable oil in a pot. Sauté chopped onion until soft and add all veggies, salt, and pepper. Mix well, and cook over medium heat until the veggies are tender, stirring occasionally.
*To assemble the arepa
1. Slice halfway through each arepa horizontally with a thin serrated knife to form a pita-like pocket and start filling them.
2. Serve with salad or anything else you like, and Bon appetite!


DID YOU KNOW?

Throughout its history, the arepa has stayed mainly unchanged from the arepas that pre-Colombian native peoples would have consumed, making the arepa one of the few pre-contact traditions that have remained popular in the years since colonization. Instruments used to make flour for the arepas, and the clay slabs on which they were cooked, were often found at archaeological sites in the area that is now Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela. The name arepa is said to be derived from erepa, the word for cornbread in the Cumanagoto language.



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.