Mendoza: Five Dishes to Enjoy While Looking Out Over the Andes

This dish is the signature dish of San Rafael, a town in Mendoza. It was traditionally a farm dish that was cooked in a clay oven. As its name suggests, it is a piece of meat that is wrapped in dough before being cooked.

Its main ingredients are meat (preferably roast beef) and vegetables (chosen by the chef). These could include onions, bell peppers, celery, or carrots. The dough can be store-bought (the kind sold for pies) or made at home.

Some people make it in a large dish, while others make it in individual portions. It is oven cooked at a medium heat for around two hours and eaten on its own or with roast potatoes.

The main ingredient in this dish is corn, and it is extremely popular in the Andean region. Originally made by the indigenous people of the pre-Columbian Americas, humita is now a popular dish in Mendoza.

Although the ingredients vary, the main ones are corn, onion, bell pepper, pumpkin, and cheese, as well as spices to season it. It can be eaten on a plate, or wrapped in a corn husk.

In the case of the latter, once the filling is ready, it is placed inside the husk and shaped into a little parcel that is then boiled. It is served in the husk, and the humita filling is eaten straight out of it. 

Traditionally made in the region of Cuyo, this dish is a kind of stew that combines the food of the region’s indigenous people with the influences brought by immigrants. Its main ingredient is tomato, and it is traditionally eaten from the time of the grape harvests onward. 

Where possible, people make it on an outdoor fire, either in a pan or a plow disc, although it can be cooked indoors too.

Mendoza’s inhabitants love this dish because of its simple ingredients that people often have at home. The recipe includes peeled tomato, onion, tomato, bell pepper, eggs, garlic, and different seasonings. Some people thicken it with cheese, flour, or breadcrumbs.

Malargüe, a city in southern Mendoza, is known for its kid goat dishes. In fact, the city holds an annual National Festival of Kid Goat Meat, attracting attendees from all over Argentina.

Kid goat is cooked on a cross spit; one of Argentina’s oldest and most traditional roasting methods. The meat is cooked a short distance away from a wood fire. The cooking process can last three or four hours. The meat is positioned in the direction of the wind.

Some historians believe that this dish first originated in Germany, reaching Rio de la Plata with southern Spanish immigrants from Andalusia, which had a long-standing tradition of making this dish.

What we do know is that the inhabitants of Mendoza adopted it as an exquisite snack to eat with maté, at breakfast, or for a bite to eat in the afternoon.

It consists of a dough made from a mixture of flour and oil, sugar, water, and salt. Once mixed, the dough is left to stand and then cut into circles, which are fried in beef dripping or oil … and then eaten! Some people like to dust them with powdered sugar.