At many restaurants throughout the United States, customers can count on a bread basket. But in New Mexico, those baskets often hold sopapillas, pillows of fried dough meant to be dipped into spicy dishes like green chile enchiladas or drizzled with honey and eaten as a dessert.
Sopapillas, also spelled sopaipillas, are typically made with just a handful of pantry ingredients. These versatile golden brown puffs can be stuffed with meat like carne adovada, or topped with red and green chile sauces. And yes, customers can grab another to eat with their stuffed sopapilla.
Recipe: Sopapillas
“It was a staple food,” said Janet Malcom, the kitchen manager of Rancho de Chimayó, a restaurant in Chimayó, N.M. Ms. Malcom sometimes helps make the sopapillas served with entrees there. Sopapillas conjure memories of her grandmother’s. “There were sopapillas or tortillas on the table for every meal,” she said.
The dish has roots in both Native American and Hispanic culture; the sopapilla is closely related to fry bread that’s served in many Native American communities. Hispanic communities were often located right next to Indigenous ones, and they exchanged some traditions, said Lois Ellen Frank, a chef, food historian and owner of Red Mesa Cuisine, which provides catering services with an educational bent in the Santa Fe area.
“There was a lot of weaving, some of the cultural traditions are inseparable or the same,” Ms. Frank said.
At Sadie’s of New Mexico in Albuquerque, sopapillas have been served for 70 years. The restaurant now serves at least 1,500 a day. Sadie Koury, who was born in 1914 to Lebanese parents and raised in New Mexico, learned how to make the sopapillas from the Indigenous people that lived nearby. The family used sopapillas, rather than pita, with their hummus.
The restaurant continues the tradition of giving out sopapillas with entrees, but it also serves them in place of a burger bun and in dessert sundaes.
“I can’t ever remember not ever having a sopapilla or tortilla in front of me,” said William R. Stafford, Ms. Koury’s nephew and an owner of the restaurant.
In Texas Roadhouse restaurants, meals begin with warm rolls with honey butter. George Gundrey serves the sopapilla at Tomasita’s locations in Albuquerque and Santa Fe in a similar vein with the same kind of butter made with local honey.
Though he can’t remember exactly where his mother got the idea for this pairing, Mr. Gundrey thinks the inspiration likely came from a Southern restaurant she visited that served bread with the sweet spread.
“It cools off your tongue,” Mr. Gundrey said of the sopapilla, “and it feels great after eating spicy chiles.”
At El Patio in Albuquerque, the sopapillas are round and fluffy, and the recipe is his grandfather’s, said David Sandoval, an owner. He enjoys eating it as a dessert.
“I’ll pour some honey on it and down the throat it goes,” he said.
Johnny Gabaldon developed his recipe as a chef in St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, when he was missing the food of his native Sante Fe. He uses a lot of yeast to help the dough rise faster and sweetened condensed milk to make the sopapillas soft and supple.
“We judge restaurants on whether their sopapillas are good,” Mr. Gabaldon said. “That’s really going to make or break our decision.”
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