Corn Arepas
Gluten Free & Vegan
Love at first bite — that’s the best way to describe how people feel about fresh arepas here at Sueño de Vida. Crispy outside, tender inside, and surprisingly light, fresh corn arepas make the perfect accompaniment to everything. For a starter, top them with sautéed or grilled veggies, hummus, refried beans, or cheese. Or serve them alongside soup, stew, or salad. Or have them for breakfast, Venezuelan style, with sweet black coffee.
If you’re avoiding gluten, arepas make a quick and delicious alternative to pita, bread, or crackers. Even if you’re not avoiding gluten, knowing how to make arepas will undoubtedly help you win friends and influence people. They are that good.
Once you master this recipe, you can experiment with arepas rellenas — arepas filled with savory or sweet ingredients. I like a simple topping of sautéed garlic and scallion to get started. You can experiment with your own topping (grilled peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant are all good) or keep it simple and omit the topping altogether.
Ingredients
1 ¼ cup white cornmeal for arepas (harina de maíz blanco precocida)
1 cup water
Dash of salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 scallion or Egyptian onion, thinly sliced
3 Tbsp high-heat cooking oil like sunflower, safflower, or peanut
Utensils
Medium sized bowl
Spoon
Large skillet or frying pan
Spatula
Plate
Directions
Make sure you have the right kind of corn flour. You need white corn flour especially processed for making arepas. Anything else will yield corn flavored hockey pucks. Look for harina de maíz blanco precocida in your local Hispanic food market. If the bag has a recipe for arepas printed on it, you got it!
Measure 1 ¼ cups of the corn flour into a bowl large enough for mixing it.
Toss in a generous pinch of salt and mix.
Make a little well in the flour and pour in a cup of room temperature water. Mix with a large spoon.
Little by little, add from the remaining ¼ cup water as needed until all the corn flour is incorporated and you have a stiff ball of dough. Do not add too much water or the dough will be mushy. Once you have a nice stiff ball of dough, STOP mixing. Over-mixing the dough makes the arepas tough and chewy.
Let your dough ball rest for a bit while you organize your utensils and other ingredients.
Sauté the minced garlic and sliced onion (or toppings of your choice) in a skillet or frying pan. Scrape out the topping into a bowl and set aside. If you don't want a topping, omit this step.
You can use the same pan to fry the arepas. Just wipe the excess out the pan with a paper towel. You don’t need to wash it. Really. You’d just be wasting oil.
Prepare the arepas. Rub a little cooking oil into your hands. This prevents the dough from sticking to you. Take a small piece of dough and roll it between your palms to make a ball. Now (and I promise you will get more deft with practice) smash the ball between your palms to flatten it to about ¼ inch thick (½ cm). That's it, one and done. Don’t fidget with it. Peel the flattened dough off your palm and place it on a plate.
Repeat the process until the dough ball is gone and the plate is full of arepas.
Pour a hefty dollop of a high-heat frying oil like sunflower, safflower, or peanut into the skillet. Do not use olive oil (it scorches at high temperatures). You don’t want to deep fry the arepas, but you need enough oil to cook them up nice and crisp. The surface of the pan should be coated with oil about 2mm thick.
HEAT THE OIL OVER MEDIUM-HIGH UNTIL IT’S HOT. If you start cooking the arepas in lukewarm oil, they get soggy and greasy. Thoroughly hot oil seals the surface of the dough to give you nice light crisp arepas.
One by one, carefully place the arepas in the hot oil. Fry until golden and crisp on both sides.
Remove from the oil and drain on a metal rack or piece of cardboard. If you aren’t serving the arepas immediately, you can keep them warm and crisp in a low oven (150°F) until ready to serve.
Kristen Krash is the co-founder and director of Sueño de Vida, a regenerative cacao farm and reforestation mission in Ecuador. Sueño de Vida works to educate and inspire everyday people about permaculture, sustainable living, environmental activism, and healthy living all in the name of living more in harmony with nature to create a better world for us all.
You can support the Sueño de Vida mission today by purchasing our cacao or contributing to direct reforestation.
Thank you.