3 dishes people actually cook in Panama: what they are, how long they take, and what you need to buy.
What can you cook from Panama? 3 traditional Panama dishes, from Carimanola (75 min, the quickest) to Ropa vieja (180 min, the longest). Each recipe is written step by step with full ingredient lists, free to read.
Panama on the map. Drag to spin the planet.
A torpedo of mashed cassava dough sealed around a dry beef picadillo and deep-fried until the crust cracks.
Beef flank poached whole, torn into threads and then simmered back into its own broth with a culantro sofrito.
Panamanian sancocho de gallina gets its body from name yam melting into the broth and its whole flavour from culantro, not cilantro.
Copper documents three dishes from Panama: Carimanola, Ropa vieja and Sancocho. Culantro and garlic 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 19 different ingredients.
The three recipes need 19 ingredients between them, of which 5 are shared by more than one dish. Culantro and green bell pepper the hardest to find: of the 586 dishes in Copper's atlas, 6 use culantro and 15 use green bell pepper. Every ingredient list on this page is complete, with quantities, and free to read.
Carimanola is the quickest at 75 minutes. Ropa vieja is the longest at 180 minutes, most of it unattended. The median is 145 minutes — a weekend dish rather than a weeknight one.
Sancocho is rated easy — start there. The full method is on its recipe page, step by step, free to read.
Panama is part of Central American.
Countries close to Panama on the globe — and close on the plate.
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