Caldo de res: what's in it and how to make the puchero

What is it?

Caldo de res, also known as puchero or cocido, is one of the most deeply rooted family broths in Mexican cooking. Its base is beef in large pieces — bone-in shank, skirt, rib, chuck — slowly cooked with marrow (bone marrow), together with a full assortment of vegetables: corn cut into chunks, potato, carrot, courgette, chayote, green beans, cabbage and, on occasion, chickpeas. The broth comes out golden, deeply savoury and filling. It is served with lime, coriander, chopped onion, raw serrano chilli or molcajete salsa, white rice on the side and warm tortillas. It is a Sunday dish in Mexican homes, especially in the north (Sonora, Sinaloa, Nuevo León), where it is known as cocido, and in the centre as caldo de res or puchero. Larousse Cocina and México en mi Cocina document it as one of the most filling and nutritious broths in the national repertoire, ideal for feeding large families.

Origin and history

Caldo de res is a direct descendant of the Madrid cocido and the Spanish peninsular pucheros, brought to Mexico during the sixteenth-century conquest along with cattle farming. In Spain, the cocido, the Andalusian puchero and the olla podrida had been central dishes of the repertoire since the Middle Ages. In New Spain, Creole and mestizo cooks adapted the peninsular cocido by replacing chickpeas with new American vegetables — corn, squash, chayote, potato — and adding coriander, raw onion and chilli as final accompaniments. Larousse Cocina classes it as one of the 'long broths' of the Mexican repertoire. Each region developed its own variant: the Yucatecan puchero includes sweet potato, plantain and chayote and is served with pickled red onion; the Sonoran cocido includes chickpeas and is served with flour tortillas; the central caldo de res includes the vegetables of the Valley of Mexico. By the nineteenth century it already appeared in books such as El Cocinero Mexicano (1831), one of the first printed cookbooks of independent Mexico, as a Sunday dish of bourgeois households. Today it is a national family ritual.

Characteristic ingredients

The cuts of beef used are the most collagen-rich so as to lend flavour to the broth: bone-in shank, rib, chuck, skirt and, above all, marrow bones — the heart of the dish. They are boiled in water with onion, garlic and salt for an hour and a half to two hours before adding the vegetables. The corn is cut into thick rounds, cob and all; the carrot, potato and chayote into large pieces; the courgette and green beans are added at the end so they do not fall apart. The cabbage goes in at the last minute. The herbs used are whole coriander, a sprig of mint and sometimes celery. Some versions include blended tomato for colour, others prefer a clean golden broth. The marrow is served separately in the bone rounds to spread on tortilla and season with salt and lime. Regional variants: in Sonora previously soaked dried chickpeas are added; in Sinaloa courgette and corn take centre stage; in Yucatán it is sweeter owing to plantain and sweet potato. The final broth should be golden, not red, and well skimmed of impurities (skimmed during cooking).

Cultural significance

Caldo de res is one of the most filling and beloved dishes on the Mexican family table. Sociologically, it is a dish for Sundays and large gatherings: with one or two kilos of beef it feeds 8 to 12 people. The 2010 UNESCO declaration of traditional Mexican cuisine implicitly includes this corpus of mestizo broths as part of the national gastronomic system that combines European ingredients (beef, chickpeas) with American ones (chilli, tomato, corn, chayote). In northern Mexico the cocido is a Sunday ritual comparable to menudo; in Yucatán the puchero forms part of the peninsular repertoire alongside queso relleno and sopa de lima. In popular culture, caldo de res appears as grandmother's comfort food, a 'simple celebration' dish and a hospitable meal for visitors. Chefs such as Patricia Quintana, Margarita Carrillo and Gabriela Cámara have documented it in their books. It also appears in the film Like Water for Chocolate (1992) as an example of late nineteenth-century ranch cooking. The stock-cube industry (Knorr, Maggi) sustains a quicker, more accessible version, though the original home-made dish remains the ideal.

Frequently asked questions