3 dishes people actually cook in Costa Rica: what they are, how long they take, and what you need to buy.
What can you cook from Costa Rica? 3 traditional Costa Rica dishes, from Casado (60 min, the quickest) to Gallo pinto (765 min, the longest). Each recipe is written step by step with full ingredient lists, free to read.
Costa Rica on the map. Drag to spin the planet.
The Costa Rican worker's plate where rice and black beans are 'married' side by side with a picadillo, fried ripe plantain, a salad and a piece of meat.
Day-old rice speckled brown by black bean broth and seasoned with salsa Lizano, the sauce Costa Ricans treat as non-negotiable.
A Costa Rican Sunday pot where bone-in shank and a procession of tropical tubers go in by cooking time, served as broth, solids and rice apart.
Copper documents three dishes from Costa Rica: Casado, Gallo pinto and Olla de carne. Black beans and chayote each appear in more than one recipe. Two of the three are simmered. Not one needs an oven — they cook entirely on the hob. Between them they use 26 different ingredients.
The three recipes need 26 ingredients between them, of which 6 are shared by more than one dish. Black beans and chayote the hardest to find: of the 586 dishes in Copper's atlas, 5 use black beans and 3 use chayote. Every ingredient list on this page is complete, with quantities, and free to read.
Casado is the quickest at 60 minutes. Gallo pinto is the longest at 765 minutes, most of it unattended. The median is 245 minutes — a weekend dish rather than a weeknight one.
Gallo pinto and Olla de carne are rated easy — start there. The full method is on each recipe page, step by step, free to read.
Costa Rica is part of Central American.
Countries close to Costa Rica on the globe — and close on the plate.
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