Name: Ajiaco Santafereño
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 1 h 50 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: colombian
Ingredients: 800 g Chicken, bone-in pieces; 2500 ml Water; 60 g Onion, roughly chopped; 10 g Garlic, crushed; 8 g Fine Sea Salt; 700 g Potato, a mix of starchy and small waxy potatoes, traditionally three Colombian varieties including papa criolla, peeled and cut into chunks; 300 g Corn, cut into rounds on the cob; 30 g Spring Onion, sliced; 15 g Guascas; 20 g Capers; 150 g Avocado, sliced; 100 g Soured Cream

Ajiaco Santafereño

Chicken and potato simmered with guascas until the starchier potatoes break down into the broth, finished with corn, capers, avocado and cream. It is Bogotá's own soup.

Not the same asCuban ajiaco (A hearty stew of beef, pork and chicken with tropical tubers, unrelated in method or flavour beyond sharing the name and a general root-vegetable-and-meat structure.)

StyleBogotá

MethodSimmering

DifficultyMedium

Method

Put the 800 g bone-in, skin-on chicken in a large pot with the 2.5 L water, 60 g white onion, 2 garlic cloves (10 g) and half the 8 g fine sea salt. Bring to a simmer and cook for 45m, until the chicken is fully cooked.
rest · 45m
Lift out the chicken, discard the skin and bones, and shred the meat. Return the broth to the pot. This takes about 10m.
prep · 10m
Add the 700 g potato to the broth and simmer for 30m, until the softer potatoes have broken down and thickened the broth while the firmer ones still hold their shape.
rest · 30m
Using a mix of a starchy potato that breaks down and a firmer, waxy one that holds its shape is what gives ajiaco its characteristic thick, creamy broth studded with intact pieces of potato, rather than either a thin soup or a smooth purée.
Stir in the 300 g corn, 2 spring onions (30 g), 15 g fresh guascas, the shredded chicken and the remaining 8 g fine sea salt. This takes about 5m.
cook · 5m
Common pitfallGuascas loses its distinctive flavour if simmered too long before serving; adding it well after the potatoes rather than at the start of cooking keeps it noticeable in the finished soup.
Simmer for a further 15m, until the corn is tender and the soup has come together.
rest · 15m
Ladle into bowls and serve with the 20 g capers, 1 avocado (150 g) and 100 g cultured soured cream alongside, for each diner to add as they like. This takes about 5m.
prep · 5m

Ahead of timeThe chicken can be poached and shredded, and the broth strained, up to two days ahead and refrigerated separately.

FreezingFreeze the soup without the capers, avocado or cream for up to two months.

ReheatingReheat gently in a covered pot, stirring, until steaming through, then add the fresh toppings just before serving.

FreezesYes.

Ajiaco santafereño has a documentary history unusually long for a soup: its ingredients (corn, potato and guascas) are described as Muisca staples from before the Spanish arrived in the Cundinamarca-Boyacá highlands, and the dish itself was written down within decades of colonisation. Spanish soldier Bernardo Vargas Machuca, based in Santafé de Bogotá, recorded its consumption in his account of the Indies in the mid-sixteenth century, and a further description survives from 1660, when the friar Joaquín de Finestrad wrote in El Vasallo of ajiaco and corn porridge as part of the Muisca diet, noting that indigenous cooks kept it meatless while Spanish colonists added meat to their own [1].

That colonial addition is what shaped the dish eaten today: chicken, three varieties of potato and guascas, finished with cream and capers layered onto what began as an indigenous dish [1] [2], producing what is often described as a mestizo dish rather than a purely indigenous or purely European one. It moved from rural and indigenous kitchens into the city's wider culinary record over the centuries that followed, appearing among Bogotá's principal dishes in Timoteo González's 1893 culinary treatise [1].

The dish's local specificity is worth stressing precisely because its name is shared, confusingly, with unrelated soups elsewhere. Cuban ajiaco is a beef, pork and chicken stew built around tropical tubers, and Peruvian ajiaco is a chilli-and-herb dish served with rice. They are different foods that happen to carry the same word, with only the loosest family resemblance to Bogotá's potato-and-guascas soup.

Bogotá's own government has since made the dish's local identity official: in 2004, the city council's Agreement 212 declared ajiaco santafereño part of the municipal cultural heritage [1].

Sources

El ajiaco santafereño: entre guascas, papas y memoria, el relato vivo de Bogotá desde sus cocinas populares, InfobaeTraces ajiaco to pre-Hispanic Muisca cooking with corn, potato and guascas, cites Spanish soldier Bernardo Vargas Machuca's mid-sixteenth-century account of the dish, Fray Joaquín de Finestrad's 1660 description in "El Vasallo," its 1893 appearance in Timoteo González's culinary treatise, and Bogotá's 2004 Agreement 212 declaring it municipal cultural heritage.
Ajiaco, WikipediaDistinguishes Colombian ajiaco santafereño (chicken, three potato varieties and guascas) from the unrelated Cuban ajiaco (a beef, pork and chicken stew) and Peruvian ajiaco, despite the shared name.