Articles:

* Cooking History of Yucatan
* Things To Do At Chichen Itza

     Geographically isolated from the heart of México, the Yucatán developed a separate cuisine long ago. Rooted in the traditions of the local Maya, Yucatecan food has been influenced by the Caribbean and Europe due to the peninsula’s ports that carried on a heavy flow of trade with foreign countries.  Pork, chicken, and fish are the mainstays of Yucatecan food. Essential to the cuisine are seasoning mixtures called recados. They’re often rubbed into meats as marinades before cooking or thinned with liquid and used as sauces.

     Achiote paste, made from the bright-red annatto seed and other spices, flavors the region’s most famous dish, cochinita pibil.  Traditionally, wild boar was marinated in achiote, then wrapped in banana leaves and roasted in a pit. Today, chefs use pork (alternatively, chicken or fish) and often substitute ovens for pits, but the deep-flavored seasoning and banana leaves still leave a rich, unique taste.  At the Hacienda Chichen Resort, cochinita pibil is still prepared in the traditional fashion: the pork and other ingredients are wrapped in banana leaves, placed within a recently made earthen pit full of burning embers and fragrant wood, then covered, and finally left to cooked for eight hours.  It is then disinterred and served with corn tortillas, pickled red onion, and Habanero chiles.

     Two other recados are commonly used: recado de chilmole and recado para bistec.  Recado de chilmole, also called relleno negro, is made with charred chiles and fragrant allspice berries. Black and pungent, it’s added to meatballs and is the base for the sauce in turkey chilmole.  Recado para bistec, a green blend of chiles, cinnamon, cloves, and other spices, jazzes up seafood, soups, and pollo escabeche oriental, a Christmas favorite found year-round in many restaurants – the "oriental" refers to eastern Yucatan, not Asia. For this dish, the recado is added to vinegared, cooked chicken, which is briefly grilled and served with broth.

     Finally, you’ll want to savor a few of the local drinks. You shouldn’t leave a Yucatecan restaurant without a taste of xtabentún, a Maya liqueur flavored with honey and anise.  Xtabentún was the nectar of the ancient Maya god-kings and is reputed to be an aphrodisiac.  For a cool, refreshing drink, try an agua fresca, a lemonade-like drink made with wonderful local fruit. Agua de horchata is a sweet, rice-based drink originating from this region. Jamaica, also a type of agua fresa, is more of a fresh brewed tea made from the flagrant flowers of a bush from the hibiscus family, but is not hibiscus.  The locally brewed beers here are some of Mexico's best: if you enjoy light beer, order a Montejo; for a dark beer, choose Negra Modelo.

If you would like to learn how to cook some of the Mayan dishes described above and more during your trip to the Yucatan Peninsula and the Mayan Riviera, check out our featured package: Mayan Cooking Heritage.

For free Mayan and Fusion Cuisine Recipes, please visit Yucatan Adventure — dedicated to promote the Maya Culture Traditions.