The seeded red chilies go into hot oil and darken within moments. The kitchen fills with a toasted, slightly sweet chili smell, and that is the moment to pull them off the heat. Ground with garlic, pepper and cumin and loosened with pork broth, they turn into a heavy, brick-red sauce. Small fried pieces of pork rib simmer in it until it clings to them. In Chuquisaca, the region around Sucre in southern Bolivia, this is fritanga. It reaches the plate with a pile of soft white mote and boiled potatoes. The plain corn and potato are there to soak up the deep, cumin-scented chili sauce.
A Chuquisaca plate built on ají
Fritanga is often called the most representative dish of Chuquisaca, and in Sucre it belongs with the picantes, the dishes built on ají. Cooks there make ají colorado and ají amarillo dishes year after year. Sucre uses chili for flavor more than for heat, and fritanga shows it. The sauce is dark, thick and fragrant, and the ribs come fried and then coated in it rather than drowned. If you want more of the country's cooking around it, the Bolivia country page gathers the other dishes.
The plate always has the same three parts. Pork ribs fried and dressed with ají colorado. Mote, the large peeled corn kernels cooked until plump. Potatoes boiled in salted water. The mote and potatoes stay plain next to the sauce on purpose. The dish lives in the contrast between the heavy red sauce and the plain mote and potato, and every forkful picks up a bit of each.
Outside Bolivia, "fritanga" means other things. In Nicaragua the word, as English speakers meet it, names a homestyle eatery. In wider Spanish it means fried food in general, or a mixed platter of fried meats like the one served in Colombia. The Bolivian fritanga here is a single dish: pork ribs in red chili sauce with mote and potatoes. Keep those other platters out of this pot.
Ingredients
The 3 tbsp of pepper and cumin covers two jobs. Season the meat with part of it, and keep the rest for grinding into the chili paste. Holding some back also leaves you room to add more in the last simmer.
Equipment
- Large bowl for soaking the mote
- Pressure cooker
- Cleaver or heavy knife, and a cutting board
- Pot for boiling the ribs, plus a ladle and a heatproof bowl for the broth
- Frying pan
- Small pan for the chilies and the sauce base
- Mortar and pestle
- Wide pot for the final simmer
- Pot for the potatoes
Choosing and substituting
Mote is the one thing worth tracking down. Latin American grocers and online shops sell it as mote or as dried white hominy. These are large, peeled kernels that soak and cook up plump and chewy. Canned hominy works when you are short on time. It is already cooked, so you skip the overnight soak and the pressure cooker. Drain it and warm it to serve, and use as much as you want on the plate rather than the 2¼ lb (1 kg) weight in the table.
Ají colorado is hard to find abroad. A large dried red chili with good color and moderate heat, such as guajillo, is the closest swap. Any substitute changes both the heat and the flavor. Small hot chilies push the sauce toward fiery and away from the deep, rounded red that Sucre cooks want. Choose chilies for color and flavor, not for heat.
For the pork, ask the butcher to saw spare ribs into small pieces across the bone. Cutting through rib bone at home takes a heavy cleaver and a firm board. What has to stay is the ribs, the dark chili sauce with cumin and garlic, and the plain mote and potato beside it. The exact chili and the corn are where you can bend.
Method
The mote needs an overnight soak, so start it the evening before. On cooking day, put the mote in the pressure cooker first. While it cooks, season and boil the ribs, which also gives you the broth the sauce needs. The frying, the chili sauce and the 15-minute simmer follow one after the other. The potatoes can boil next to the final simmer.
When it goes wrong
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The sauce tastes bitter or harsh | The chilies burned in step 6 | Start the sauce again with fresh chilies and pull them as soon as they darken |
| The sauce is thin and runs off the meat | Too much broth went in | Simmer uncovered, stirring, until it turns heavy and clings |
| The sauce is too stiff or catches on the pot | Too little broth, or the heat is too high | Add a little reserved broth, lower the heat, and stir from the bottom |
| The meat is pink at the bone | The boil was too short | Simmer the ribs in the sauce until they are cooked through to the center. A browned surface does not mean the center is done |
| The mote is still hard in the middle | Too short a soak, or not cooked long enough | Cook it again following the manual until the kernels are soft all the way through |
| The dish is far hotter than expected | A small, hot chili was used in place of ají colorado | Serve more mote and potato with each portion, and choose a larger, milder red chili next time |
Serving, variations and storage
At the table
Fritanga is a full plate on its own: ribs in sauce, mote and potato, with parsley on top. Elsewhere in Chuquisaca cooking, llajua (the fresh table salsa) and lemon sit next to mote and potatoes. A spoonful of llajua or a wedge of lemon on the side works here too. Keep them as optional extras rather than part of the sauce.
Variations
- Canned hominy in place of mote. It saves the overnight soak and the pressure cooker. The kernels come out softer and a little less chewy, and the plate loses some of its bite.
- Guajillo or another large dried red chili. It keeps the dark color and gives a fruitier, gentler sauce that stays close to the flavor-first Sucre style.
- More pepper and cumin in the final simmer. This pushes the sauce toward earthy and peppery. Add it in pinches during step 8 and taste between each one.
Storage
Let leftovers cool. Refrigerate them promptly in a covered container. Reheat the ribs and sauce until they are hot all the way to the center, and add a splash of water if the sauce has set too thick.
Frequently asked questions
Is fritanga very spicy?
It is built for flavor more than burn. The seeds come out of the chilies, and the sauce is meant to taste deep and toasted. How hot it ends up depends mostly on the chili you buy, so a large, moderate red chili keeps it in the Sucre style.
Why boil the ribs before frying them?
The boil cooks the pork through and gives you the broth that loosens the chili paste. The frying then adds a browned, crisp surface that the thick sauce grips during the final simmer. If you skip the boil, you lose both the fully cooked center and the broth.
How do I divide the pepper and cumin between the meat and the paste?
Coat the meat lightly, enough to speckle every surface, and grind the rest into the chili paste. Taste the sauce during the 15-minute simmer and add more if it needs depth. Adding it at the end lets you adjust to the chili you used.
