Home-style recipes from around the world, written for real kitchens

EN
Honduran sopa de caracol: snail meat, cassava, and plantain simmered in coconut milk
Prep30 min
Cook45 min
Serves4 servings
CuisineHonduran
Latin America & Caribbean

Sopa de Caracol: Honduran Conch and Coconut Soup

A recipe for sopa de caracol, born on Honduras's northern coast, made with sea snail meat, coconut milk, cassava, green plantain, and carrot. Covers its origin with the Garifuna people, how to choose snail meat outside the Caribbean, a caution about the salivary gland of whelks, and how to simmer so the meat does not turn tough.

Total: 1 hr 15 minLevel: Intermediate

Cooking flow

Cooking steps

STEP 11 / 6

Pound the snail meat and slice it thin

10 min

Pounding shucked whelk meat with a meat mallet and slicing it thin on the bias
Pound until the meat spreads a size flatter and the springiness gives

Pat the shucked whelk meat dry, put it on a cutting board, and pound it about 10 times with a meat mallet or the end of a rolling pin to loosen the fibers. When you finish pounding, slice it on the bias about 5 mm thick. It is enough when the meat has spread a size flatter, the springiness gives when pressed, and the fibers have loosened and turned supple. Keep the sliced meat in the refrigerator.

STEP 22 / 6

Sauté the aromatics in butter

5 min

Sautéing garlic, onion, bell pepper, and celery in butter in a pot
Sauté until the onion is translucent, before it browns

Melt 2 tbsp butter in a heavy pot over medium heat, add the garlic, and sauté for 1 minute until fragrant. Add the onion, bell pepper, and celery and sauté for about 4 minutes. Take them off the heat when the onion is translucent and wilted, before it picks up any brown color.

STEP 33 / 6

Simmer the cassava and carrot

Simmering cassava and carrot in the stock
Simmer until the corners of the cassava round off a little

Add 800 ml water, the granulated seafood bouillon, salt, and pepper to the pot and turn the heat to high. When it boils, add the cassava and carrot and simmer for 15 minutes over medium heat. This stage is done when the corners of the cassava have rounded off a little and a bamboo skewer goes in about halfway.

STEP 44 / 6

Dissolve flour in the coconut milk and add it

3 min

Dissolving flour and annatto in coconut milk and pouring it into the pot
Pour it in once no lumps of flour show and the liquid is smooth

Put 1 can of coconut milk in a bowl, add 1 tbsp all-purpose flour, the annatto powder, and the cumin, and whisk well. When no lumps of flour are visible and it is a smooth liquid, pour it into the pot together with the remaining coconut milk. Stir the whole pot from the bottom in big motions, and when the color is even, go on to the next step.

STEP 55 / 6

Add the plantain and simmer

Adding green plantain to the coconut milk soup and simmering
Simmer until a skewer slides easily into the cassava and plantain

Cut a lengthwise slit in the skin of the green plantains, peel them, cut into rounds 2 cm thick, and put them in the pot. Simmer for 15 minutes over medium-low heat with the lid ajar. Coconut milk separates easily if boiled hard, so keep the surface just quivering. The vegetables are done when a bamboo skewer slides easily into the cassava and plantain and the soup has a light body.

STEP 66 / 6

Add the snail meat and cilantro and simmer for only 5 minutes

Adding whelk meat and cilantro to the soup and simmering briefly
The meat turns white and opaque and the edges curl up slightly

Taste and adjust with salt, then add the sliced snail meat and half the cilantro. Simmer for 5 minutes over medium-low heat, turn off the heat, cover, and let stand for 3 minutes. The meat is cooked when it is white and opaque and the edges curl up slightly. La Prensa's recipe also stresses that snail turns tough if simmered longer than 5 minutes.

0 / 0
Ingredients

Ingredients

1 / 3

Snail meat and vegetables

Ingredient Amount Substitutes & notes
Shucked whelk meat 450 g With the salivary gland removed. Thaw frozen meat in the refrigerator
Cassava (frozen) 450 g Frozen, peeled. Cut into about 4 cm cubes
Green plantains 2 Ones with hard, green skin. Cut into rounds 2 cm thick
Carrot 1 1.5 cm dice
Onion 1/2 Minced
Bell pepper 1 Minced. Stands in for the local chile dulce
Celery 1 stalk Stringed and minced
Garlic 2 cloves Grated
2 / 3

Soup

Ingredient Amount Substitutes & notes
Coconut milk 2 cans (800 ml) Shake the cans well before using
Water 800 ml
Granulated seafood bouillon 2 tsp A shrimp or fish Western-style bouillon. If you have seafood stock, use 800 ml of it in place of the water
Butter 2 tbsp Margarine is also often used locally
All-purpose flour 1 tbsp Dissolved in the coconut milk to give a light body
Annatto powder 1/2 tsp Leave out for the white Garifuna style
Cumin (ground) 1/4 tsp
Salt 1 tsp Adjust according to the saltiness of the stock
Pepper 1/4 tsp
Cilantro 1/2 bunch Coarsely chopped. Culantro too, if you have it
3 / 3

To serve

Ingredient Amount Substitutes & notes
Rice for 4 servings
Lime 1 Cut into wedges
0 / 0

La Ceiba, a town on the Caribbean coast of northern Honduras. In the seaside eateries, sweet coconut steam rises from big pots, and the bowls hold a cloudy white soup with cassava, green plantain, and thinly sliced conch. You squeeze lime over it and eat it with white rice. This is sopa de caracol, which the local press calls "the queen of soups."

Caracol is Spanish for a sea snail. The local way is to use queen conch, the large pink sea snail caught in the Caribbean. Since it is hard to find elsewhere, this recipe uses shucked whelk meat. As long as you handle the meat properly, canned coconut milk and root vegetables are enough to produce a Caribbean seaside soup.

A Soup the Garifuna Brought to the Northern Coast

Sopa de caracol served in a seaside eatery on the northern coast of Honduras

According to the Honduran newspaper La Prensa, sopa de caracol is a regional dish of the northern coast of Honduras, made mainly by the Garifuna people. The Garifuna are the people who moved from the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent to the coast of Honduras in April 1797. The story goes that they gathered conch and other seafood and made a soup of it with nothing but plantain and cassava.

Did you know

The soup has even become a song. The chorus of "Sopa de Caracol," a hit by the Honduran band Banda Blanca, is in the Garifuna language; according to La Prensa's translation, it means "I want to drink the soup, I want to enjoy more, a little for you, a little for me."

According to the same article, the traditional Garifuna sopa de caracol is a white soup. It uses no coloring seasoning, is cooked in milk pressed from grated coconut, and keeps the vegetables to little more than cassava and plantain. The Honduran cook Zenia Paz says "the more naturally you make it, the better it tastes," and that it is seasoned not with bouillon cubes but with a seafood stock made from shells and the like.

In Honduran homes and eateries today, on the other hand, the method is far freer. The recipe by the cook Carlos Espinal in the newspaper El Heraldo adds achiote (annatto) and cumin to the coconut milk for a faint color, and puts in carrot and celery as well. A white soup and a faintly yellow soup are both Honduran sopa de caracol.

Ingredients (serves 4)

Ingredients for sopa de caracol: whelk meat, coconut milk, cassava, green plantain, carrot, cilantro

This is a formulation based on the El Heraldo and La Prensa recipes, adjusted so that it can be made with canned coconut milk and snail meat that is easy to find outside the Caribbean.

Caution

Some of the sea snails sold as whelk or buccinum have a toxin (tetramine) in their salivary glands. According to Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, headache, dizziness, and symptoms like seasickness can appear 30 minutes to 1 hour after eating. Choose shucked meat with the salivary gland removed, or, if you use snails in the shell, always remove the yellowish-white salivary gland inside the meat before cooking.

Tip

Queen conch is rarely available outside the Caribbean. Besides whelk, you can make this with shucked turban shell meat or frozen shrimp. Some families in Honduras make it with shrimp, and La Prensa's recipes include one that uses shrimp.

Caution

Cassava must be peeled and cooked thoroughly through to the center before eating. Do not eat it raw or undercooked.

How to Make Sopa de Caracol

Allow about 30 minutes for prep and about 45 minutes to simmer and finish the soup. The snail meat goes in for the last 5 minutes, so have the vegetables cooked soft by then.

Caution

The skin of green plantain is hard and a knife slips easily on it. Cut off both ends, make a shallow lengthwise slit in the skin, and peel it off by opening the skin with your fingers.

Tips for Keeping the Snail Meat Tender

The difference in thickness between pounded and unpounded snail meat

Sea snails shrink and turn rubbery when overcooked. Carlos Espinal in El Heraldo also recommends pounding the meat first to break the fibers and only then cutting it thin. Pound, then slice thin, and add it to the soup last. Keep these two rules and even whelk comes out tender.

Tip

When using frozen shucked meat, move it to the refrigerator the night before and thaw it slowly. If you rush by thawing in a microwave or under running water, moisture leaves the meat and it tends to turn tough.

Tip

Coconut milk separates and oil floats up if it boils hard. Keep it at medium-low while simmering, and check from time to time that the soup is still white and smooth.

The White Garifuna Style, and a Shrimp Version

White sopa de caracol made without annatto

If you want the traditional Garifuna style, leave out the annatto and cumin, leave out the carrot and celery too, and make it with only cassava and plantain. The soup stays white, and the flavors of coconut and snail come through directly. La Prensa's article also mentions that in Garifuna homes, "machuca," made by mashing green plantain and rolling it into balls, is made separately and served alongside.

To make it with shrimp, prepare 450 g of shrimp, peeled and deveined, and add them in place of the snail meat in step 6, simmering for 3 minutes. If you simmer the shrimp shells in a little water for 10 minutes to make a stock, the seafood aroma becomes much stronger even without granulated bouillon.

How to Serve

Finished sopa de caracol served with rice and lime
Scatter the remaining cilantro and serve with lime and rice

Put the snail meat and vegetables in a deep bowl, ladle in the hot soup, and scatter the remaining cilantro. The El Heraldo recipe suggests white rice and lime wedges; La Prensa suggests rice, and also corn tortillas or fried plantain. A squeeze of lime cuts the sweetness of the coconut cleanly.

For another Honduran dish, try baleadas (in Japanese), flour tortillas wrapped around beans and cream. For another coconut dish from the Caribbean coast, Jamaica's coconut-simmered fish run down has the same taste of the sea.

Frequently Asked Questions

Shucked whelk meat, a can of coconut milk, and green plantain laid out

Where is the salivary gland of the whelk?

When you shuck a whelk in its shell, you will see a fat-like yellowish-white mass at the head end of the meat. That is the salivary gland. Cutting the meat in half lengthwise makes it easier to take out. If you are not confident, it is safest to buy shucked meat labeled as having the gland removed.

What if I can't get green plantain?

Increase the cassava or substitute potato. You won't get the starchy, fluffy texture of green plantain, but it still works as a soup. Using ripe plantain will make a sweet soup.

Can I make it ahead?

Snail meat turns tough when reheated, so this is not a make-ahead dish. If there are leftovers, take the meat out and refrigerate it, warm only the soup and vegetables, and at the end just warm the meat by returning it. I can't give a clear figure for how many days it keeps, so finish it soon.

Which ingredients should I watch for allergies?

It uses shellfish (shrimp, if you make it with shrimp), butter for sautéing (dairy), and all-purpose flour for body (wheat). You can substitute vegetable oil for the butter, or leave out the flour.

Sources

Golden baked Argentine empanadas arranged on a wooden cutting board
Argentina

Argentine Empanadas: Golden Baked Half-Moon Meat Pies

How to bake Argentine beef empanadas at home: the beef, olive, and hard-boiled egg filling, a cold butter dough, sealing, oven temperature, regional differences, and storage.

Argentine milanesa served with lemon and salad
Argentina

Milanesa: Argentina's Thin Breaded Cutlet

How to fry Argentine milanesa thin and golden in a home kitchen: the local name, the cut of beef, how thin the crumb coating should be, oil temperature, how it differs from napolitana, substitutes, storage, what goes wrong, sandwiches, menu pairings and safe cooking temperatures, laid out so a first-timer does not get lost.

Argentine revuelto gramajo, eggs with shoestring potatoes and ham, piled on a plate
Argentina

Revuelto Gramajo: Argentine Scrambled Eggs With Shoestring Potatoes

Revuelto gramajo is a beloved Argentine plate of eggs, ham, and shoestring potatoes. The oil temperature for lightly frying the potatoes, heat that keeps the eggs from setting too hard, substitutes with ham and frozen potatoes, how it is eaten in a canteen style, why it can't be made ahead, how to plan storage, and the pans to shop for.

Belizean chimole: chicken, boiled eggs, and potatoes floating in a black broth
Belize

How to Make Chimole: Belize's Black Chicken Soup

How to make chimole (Chimole / Black Dinna), Belize's black chicken soup. A stand-in for days without black recado, how to simmer the chicken and boiled eggs, heat that avoids scorching, adjusting the spice, shopping for local ingredients, eating it with rice or tortillas, and storing it for the next day, set out for a home kitchen.