Eat your Way through Latin America: Honduras

For Hispanic Heritage Month, the “Eat your Way through Latin America” series will feature the top five Latin American countries represented on campus at Elon over the course of the next five weeks. Although we recognize that we are not all of Hispanic heritage at The Edge Magazine, as anthropologists and avid food lovers, we wanted to respect the cultural backgrounds and experiences of our fellow students. 
Honduras, similarly to Columbia, is a tropical country with borders along both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The Caribbean Sea is what the country is named after, as the name Honduras means “depths,” which refers to the deep waters off its northern coast. This coast is known as the mosquitia, or mosquito coast, because of the indigenous Miskito people that inhabited the coast. The Bay Islands off this coast were fought over by the English and Spanish, resulting in a large number of English settlers here. It is now home to many Garifuna people, or afro-Caribbean descendants of those who were brought from West Africa on the Atlantic Slave Trade. Because of the rich history of natives, Spanish and English settlers, and African slaves in Honduras, its cuisine is a fusion of these traditions and ingredients.

Honduras was originally inhabited by the Mayans. Before the arrival of Columbus, the Mayans moved north into Mexico for reasons historians are still struggling to understand. The most prominent theory explains a famine may have resulted in unrest, causing Mayan tribes to split up and migrate in different directions. Mayan influence can be seen in the cuisine of Honduras, as both corn and beans are staple ingredients in nearly all dishes. 
Along with corn and beans, plantains play an important role in Honduran cuisine. As with Puerto Rico, this comes from African-influenced cooking techniques and ingredients. Fried plantains, or platanos fritos, are served with many traditional dishes in Honduras, like plato típico and sopa de caracol, or just by themselves as tostones. Plato típico, or the typical plate of Honduras that encompasses locally resourced food, is divided between what is served for breakfast and what is served for lunch and dinner. Breakfast typically consists of a fried egg, refried beans, tortillas, fried plantains, cheese and a glass of orange juice or coffee. For lunch and dinner, the plate often includes steak, chorizo, refried beans, rice, avocado, cheese, chimol, mantequilla, corn tortillas and fried plantains. Chimol is pico de gallo that is eaten at almost every meal or with tortilla chips. Mantequilla is a Honduran-style sour cream. Sopa de caracol is a conch soup cooked with coconut milk and conch broth served with plantains. These traditional dishes represent African influence through plantain-frying techniques and the use of coconut milk.

Some other prominent dishes in Honduran cuisine are burritas, baleadas and pupusas. Burritas are tortillas typically filled with shredded meat, cheese, and refried beans. These are similar to burritos, but burritos usually contain chile. Baleadas consist of refried beans, mantequilla, cheese, avocado, scrambled eggs and sometimes chorizo or steak folded into handmade tortillas. Pupusas are gooey griddle cakes made out of rice flour or cornmeal. Cheese is melted inside the thick, doughy tortillas, and they are sometimes stuffed with beans or pork. Often, they are topped with pickled onions and curtido, or spicy coleslaw. The dishes in Honduras are not usually spicy, but are very aromatic with spices such as cumin, achiote, allspice and paprika.

In Honduras, bananas are the main export, which has brought in large companies from North America. These companies remain the largest landowners in the country, which has created power struggles between the Honduran people and the wealthy corporations settled there. These corporations are utilizing Honduran space, labor and resources without compensating the country or its people, which has produced an aristocratic political climate for the wealthy, while a majority of the population—around 65% of the country—remain impoverished. This has caused unrest and high crime rates, but the current president of Honduras is attempting to make strides to improve the financial situation of the country and its residents. 

The history of Honduras and the relationships between its indigenous people, Spanish and English settlers, and North American corporations have deeply influenced the culture of its cuisine. Honduran cuisine is very similar to its neighboring Latin American countries due to their similar histories, but subtle differences can be found in the different ingredients used in each cuisine. Although the main ingredients, like beans, corn and plantains, are staples in most Latin American cuisine, Honduran specialties, like mantequilla and chimol, define the country’s cuisine and set it apart. 

Stay tuned for the next part of the “Eat Your Way through Latin America” series by following @theedgemag!