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Hi, my name is David Kramer,
Culinary Arts Instructor at the College of DuPage.
Today, I want to make a traditional Venenzuelan arepas
for Hispanic Heritage Month.
So I want to show you a few things
first that we're going to be working with, is we work some pork shoulder
and we're going to braise this with some aromatics from chicken stock,
garlic, onions, chilies, bay leaves
And while that's simmering,
we're going to make some dough that we're going to fill the arepa with.
So as we walk through this,
I may give you some variations of things you can do, some fun you can have with it
and some different fillings that you can do. OK.
So when you are cooking the pork shoulder, choose to use pork shoulder,
want to make sure that you cooked it very slowly.
So you break down that connective tissue to make it tender.
Make a very flavorful.
You can also do this in a pressure cooker if you have an instant pot,
but make sure that you save everything
with it, all the juices and everything that they're in with the pork.
OK, so in our pan wer're going to add a little bit of vegetable oil.
Neutral tasting.
You can use olive oil if you have that.
And to that, we're going to add onions,
the garlic, the bay leaf and the poblano chili.
So what we do with the poblano chili is we took the chile,
we burn it on the burner so we can blister the skin and take it off.
There's a lot of nice roasted flavor.
But the thing to remember with some of the chilies, especially poblanos,
once you start to heat them up, it accentuates the heat in the chili.
So if you were to taste this raw, might not be very spicy,
but once you heat it up, it starts to get a little hot.
So if you wanted to spice here, add more, not so spicy,
don't put so much in.
OK, going to put some salt and pepper in here.
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Don't be afraid to season this.
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So with arepas, what we can do is
we can make them into a sandwich, which we're going to do today.
So we make the, more like a pancake, that we're going to split in half
and open up and eat like a sandwich.
Some of them you can leave open face if you like, and you can just top them.
It's really depends on where you go to have arepas.
Done it a little differently in South America or Mexico or Spain.
So fun little tidbits in there. Very regional.
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Also, too, if you have larger cuts of meat, it's
going to be easier to shred this into pieces,
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before you fill it into the arepa.
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Just gonna get a little bit of color on both sides.
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And don't worry if it sticks in the bottom of the pan a little bit,
that's going to release itself
when it begins to cook, and it really creates a lot of nice flavor
when you do that.
Some chopped onion, garlic,
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a couple of bay leaves.
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And then that poblano chili that we roasted and chopped.
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Get this incorporated.
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Going to take quite some time
to cook, probably about an hour, hour and a half.
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You can also cook it in the oven, if you like.
So if you have a Dutch oven,
put that in there, cover it and put it into the oven.
That works really well.
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OK. And then our chicken broth.
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Recommendation that if you
are buying chicken broth, recommend the low sodium.
So as this cooks and reduces,
doesn't get salty.
And scrape the bottom.
Get some of the tidbits off the bottom, little brown bits
that’s where all the flavor is.
OK, so move this to the back burner.
And then you can cover it
if you have a piece of foil or a lid.
Anything just to keep it covered while it's cooking.
Keep all those juices in there.
Turn it down to a low flame and just let it simmer nice and slow.
So check for doneness.
You can take it and see if you can, tear it very easily,
if it falls apart, if it's not coming apart very easily, just leave it cooking.
OK, next thing we're going to do is we're going to make our arepa dough.
So I have a bowl that I'm going to use, I have some plastic wrap ready to go
because I'm going to cover this and leave it sit
for about 30 minutes.
OK, so we have our
corn flour here, very fine.
And with this, it's not like flour.
You don't really have to worry about over mixing it
and they're going to add some water to this.
Now, really, depending on the time of year,
if it's more humid, you don't need quite as much water.
If it's drier out, a little bit more water.
So add some water.
Not quite all of it.
And we're going to mix this into a dough
and you're going to see it's going to be very
loose in the beginning and come together pretty quickly.
But what's important with this is that when it's sitting,
it's needs to hydrate.
So what's happening is it sits for those 30 minutes.
We're going to make sure that it's not too wet and it's not too dry.
So in the beginning, it might feel a little wet.
Give it some time for that water to be absorbed.
You can also put a wet towel over this as it sits.
I like to use the bowl
get all those little bits up.
And I just use the glove to keep my hands clean.
OK, so now what I'm feeling for, let's get an idea
now, I can really feel this, it's just a little, a little dry.
So if it's cracking
on the edges, it means, it needs a little bit more water.
So just a splash, you don't need to add much.
And then again, if you add too much water,
you can always add a little bit more of the the corn flour to it.
So with this corn flour,
it's already cooked, it's a cooked, dried product, so it's not like flour
where you have to cook it again,
after you brown it.
OK, that's better.
So you see, it's not as dry.
Now, you can make this ahead of time.
If you do, I recommend that you take it out of the refrigerator for
about an hour before you're going to use it, it'll be much more easier to use.
The other thing is you can add to this. add a little bit of vegetable oil.
It can make a little bit more pliable.
OK, just set this off here to rest, put away our water.
OK, next thing we're going to do
is check on our pork.
Just make sure it's simmering, OK.
And you're going to have extra liquid while this is cooking,
so don't be afraid that you're going to have too much in there.
OK, so I have some dough that's already made.
And I had it sitting out for about an hour and you can see it's
much softer and yes, you're going to see a little bit of cracking, but that's OK.
I can see that when I push down it, it's very easy to push down.
OK, so take two equal size pieces.
And what we're going to do
now is we're going to make a patty out of this.
So traditionally with Venezuelan
arepas, we make a sandwich.
So we're going to make this about a quarter of an inch thick
and then we're going to brown it.
And put these in the oven and
they take a little while in the oven to take about 15 minutes in the oven.
So what's fun about these
is that, you know, we could fill these with whatever we want.
We could even add cheese to the dough if you wanted to in that sandwich.
You could put vegetables in there.
You could put meat in there, so you can have fun with this.
Nice thing about these is I can make these ahead of time.
So you're going to see when we brown them and then put them in the oven,
if you want to make them a day ahead, make them earlier in the day.
So you have them ready.
And you just warm up your filling and put them in.
OK, off to the side.
OK, so to brown these now you can use a nonstick pan,
you can use a cast iron pan, you can put them on the griddle,
put them on the grill outside a panini press works really well.
But what we're going to do
is we're going to brown them
and then we're going to put them into the oven so it gets light,
it gets fluffy and cooks all the way through.
OK, use some butter. Butter can give you a really good flavor, good color.
And don't be afraid to use a lot of butter.
The butter will be absorbed into the into the dough.
And once you make them, they're a little bit more fragile.
So if you do make them ahead of time
to this point, keep them just slightly chilled.
And they don't need to be exact.
This is good street food.
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So a nice medium heat.
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And that'll take a few minutes to brown.
OK, so I have some pork
already prepared, so you can see that I have shredded it.
The chilies are in there. The onions are in there.
Just be sure that you take the bay leaf out.
And there's also still some of the juice in there
that really good, flavorful liquid.
We're going to need that when we go to heat this up
to put us inside of the, of the arepa.
So now this will be softer like a pancake,
so you can use your hamburger spatula to turn this over which is fine,
a rubber spatula.
You might start to see it puff
just a little bit just because of the air that's coming through it.
So there's nothing wrong with that, if you see that.
You could also make them smaller
if you want, make them more individual and make them bigger
if you wanted to and then cut into sandwich.
Alright, just going to take a peek at this side,
ust a little bit more color.
See that nice little crust on there seems there’s a good texture.
It's gonna help keep it together when you pick it up to eat it.
OK, so now we have some
butter on the other side.
Pour some of that butter back over the top.
OK. And now we want to do with
this, want to put this in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes.
The bigger ones are going to take a little bit longer.
The small ones won't take quite as long.
OK, I have some already ready to go.
OK, so we're going to do with these now,
we're going to heat up our pork and you just use the same pan
that you used for the arepa ou can just wipe them out
and you're going to see why it's important to keep that juice.
We need that to heat up the pork.
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They're gonna get a little softer and suck up some of that juice.
This has been in the refrigerator so it’s a little firm.
You might want to taste it, season
a little bit more of more salt and pepper.
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OK, so that's nice and hot.
We're going to do is going to take
the arepas and we're going to split them.
OK, so you can take a serrated knife,
is the best thing to use and you want to saw back and forth.
Try not to press too much.
So you don't slip with a knife and when we cut them,
you can stop when you're just about the end
and you can make them open up a little bit easier
to keep the filling inside and see it steaming. OK.
And this one same thing.
Open these up.
Take our filling.
A little juice is ok.
And some queso fresco.
So when that cheese
hits the hot pork, it's going to melt a little bit.
Nice and creamy a little salty.
A little bit of cilantro in there.
OK, and there you have traditional Venezuelan arepas.
Hope that you enjoyed Hispanic Heritage Month.
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