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Caribbean · 18°29′N 69°54′W · Kitchen testing pending

Dominican Republic

Sugar burnt on purpose, and the crust at the bottom of the pot

The ten

Ranked by what people actually name first

  1. A wide speckled cream plate divided between dark red stewed kidney beans in glossy sauce, a mound of white rice topped with a small piece of yellow pepper, browned stewed chicken pieces in gravy, and a stack of round golden tostones, on a wooden table.La Bandera Dominicana1 hr 25 minLunch at noon, in every province. White rice for peace, red beans for the blood of the patriots, dark-glazed chicken for freedom. The chicken gets its colour from sugar taken to a mahogany foam in scorching oil — pyrolysis, not browning liquid — and the best part of the plate is the concón scraped off the bottom of the pot.
  2. A deep speckled bowl of thick golden-amber stew packed with chunks of beef and pork, a piece of chicken, sliced red sausage, a wheel of corn, orange squash, white cassava and a round of plantain, with a plate of white rice behind.Sancocho de Siete Carnes3 hr 20 minNew Year's Eve, national holidays, and torrential rain. Seven meats enter the caldero in strict order of how long their collagen needs — beef, ribs and goat alone for the first 45 minutes — and the broth is thickened by mashing cooked plantain and yautía back into it, never by flour.
  3. A white plate holding a pale mound of mashed plantain crowned with bright pink pickled onion rings, two sunny-side-up fried eggs, a row of overlapping reddish-brown fried salami discs and two griddle-marked slabs of golden fried white cheese.Mangú con Los Tres Golpes45 minThe national breakfast, and the trick is ice water. Beaten into scorching boiled green plantain along with butter, the thermal shock stops the amylose chains realigning, which is the difference between a pillowy purée and a rubbery block ten minutes later. The three hits are fried salami, fried cheese and a sunny egg.
  4. A pale ceramic plate holding a golden dome of coarsely mashed plantain studded with browned pork pieces and whole garlic cloves, beside a small cup of amber broth and a heap of crisp chunks of fried pork belly.Mofongo Dominicano con Chicharrón1 hrA nocturnal institution in the Cibao valley. Green plantains fried to tender but still pale, then pounded in a wooden pilón while scorching hot with garlic paste, pork lard and chicharrón — the fat coats the free amylose so the mass binds into a coarse crumb instead of fusing into rubber.
  5. A cream and brown rimmed plate of dark glossy braised goat pieces on the bone in a thick mahogany gravy flecked with green herbs and red pepper, with a mound of white rice pushed to one side, on a wooden table.Chivo Liniero2 hr 25 minIn the semi-arid Línea Noroeste the creole goats graze on wild orégano poleo, so the meat is seasoned before it is ever cooked. Washed with bitter orange, marinated in a fistful of that same oregano, seared in caramelised cane sugar, deglazed with aged dark rum, and braised slow with a whole scotch bonnet floating in it.
  6. A whole fried red snapper on a pale rimmed platter, its skin crisp and reddish-gold with deep diagonal slashes across the flank and the tail curled up, surrounded by lime wedges and three round golden tostones, on a dark wooden table.Pescado Frito al Estilo Boca Chica35 minA whole red snapper, diamond-scored at 45 degrees right down to the spine so 185 °C oil can circulate around the bone, dusted in a paper-thin veil of flour — never a batter — and submerged whole. The fins and tail come out as edible chips; the flesh inside stays pearlescent.
  7. A glass baking dish of layered casserole with a blistered golden-brown cheese top, a corner cut away to show a pale plantain top layer, a thick band of dark minced beef and a yellow plantain base, on a blue-checked cloth.Pastelón de Plátano Maduro1 hr 25 minA tropical lasagna where the pasta sheets are silky mashed black-ripe plantain. Between them goes a beef picadillo with olives, capers and raisins, cooked down until it is completely dry — any free water and the whole casserole collapses into soup when you cut it — bound with beaten egg and baked under melted cheese.
  8. A speckled white bowl heaped with pale golden rice studded with olive-green pigeon peas, a piece of golden-brown toasted rice crust on top, and three slices of avocado fanned along one side, on a wooden table.Moro de Guandules con Coco55 minSamaná's rice, cooked in pressed coconut milk rather than broth. Coconut milk is an oil-in-water emulsion, so it goes in at a strict 1:1 with water and never boils hard — and the coconut fats and sugars that sink to the caldero floor toast into concón de coco, the most prized rice crust in the republic.
  9. A blue-grey rimmed plate heaped with craggy golden-brown fried bone-in chicken pieces, with two halved limes behind them and three flat golden tostones fanned along the left edge, on a wooden table.Chicharrón de Pollo Dominicano45 minThe premier social finger food of Santo Domingo and Santiago. Chicken chopped straight through the bone with a cleaver into 4 cm morsels, marinated in garlic, lime, dark rum and salsa china, then dredged in cornstarch rather than flour — no gluten, so the crust sets as a brittle glass film that stays crunchy for hours.
  10. A wide bowl of pale rosy-pink creamy dessert holding whole dark red beans, orange sweet potato cubes and raisins, with a cinnamon quill laid across it and four round pale milk cookies floating on the surface.Habichuelas con Dulce2 hrA dessert made of red kidney beans, and a Holy Week institution shared by the potful between neighbours. The beans are boiled soft, puréed, and pushed through a fine sieve until not one trace of skin remains — that straining is the whole dish — then simmered with coconut milk, evaporated milk, cinnamon, batata and raisins.

Two techniques run through this whole list, and neither is browning in the ordinary sense. The first is sugar taken deliberately past caramel: white sugar dropped into scorching oil and left, without stirring, until it foams dark mahogany at somewhere between 160 and 180 °C. That is pyrolysis, generating furans and maltol, and dropping cold meat in halts it while transferring a bitter-sweet bronze glaze onto the protein. It is how pollo guisado gets its colour on La Bandera, how the goat is sealed in chivo liniero, and how the seven meats of sancocho are started. The window between mahogany and bitter black ash is about ten seconds.

The second is concón — the crust deliberately built against the bottom of the caldero. Rice held against bare aluminium above 120 °C loses its last moisture and the starch pushes through retrogradation and dextrinisation into a rigid sheet, peeled off in shards and served on top. Oil run around the perimeter when the rice is domed is what lets it release. The version everyone argues is best is the Samaná one, where rice simmers in pressed coconut milk and the coconut fats sink and toast into concón de coco.

Plantain does more work here than anywhere. Green and boiled, then beaten with ice water and butter, it becomes mangú — and the ice water is the entire point, because thermal shock plus mechanical shear stops the amylose chains realigning into the rubbery block that mashed plantain otherwise sets into. Green and fried at 165 °C, then pounded hot in a wooden pilón with pork fat and cracklings, the same fruit becomes mofongo. Black-ripe and boiled to a sweet purée, it becomes the layers of pastelón. Green, fried twice at two temperatures, it becomes tostones, which turn up beside almost everything.

The last dish is the strangest and the most loved. Habichuelas con dulce is a dessert built from red kidney beans — boiled soft, puréed, and pushed through a fine sieve until not one fragment of skin survives, then simmered with coconut milk, evaporated milk, cinnamon, clove, batata and raisins until the bean starches thicken it into custard on their own. It is made for Lent and Holy Week, and shared by the potful between neighbours.