6 Chilean Dishes That Will Immediately Make You Hungry

Located between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes, a location that boasts impressive biodiversity and more than 2,500 miles of coastline, Chile is a dream destination for food-focused travelers. Whether it’s meals with centuries-old aboriginal influences, contemporary dishes, or home cooking, Chilean cuisine is known for rich flavors, bright colors, and regional variation.

Here’s a look at six popular traditional Chilean dishes that highlight the diversity of delicious flavors available in the South American country.

1. Caldillo de Congrio

Caldillo de congrio is a refreshing, light stew with an intense and savory flavor due to the inclusion of conger eel. Some Chileans add other seafood like clams or mussels, while the soup also usually features tomato, onions, garlic, potatoes, carrots, and various spices. It’s usually thickened with a splash of cream and topped with fresh cilantro and parsley.

Caldillo de congrio is eaten hot on cold winter days, traditionally out of a clay dish. It is particularly popular in central Chilean coastal towns and south of Talcahuano. Chilean Nobel-Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda was among its most famed admirers, once writing that caldillo de congrio was “a delight that must be tasted, a delicacy worthy of the gods.”

2. Cazuela

Cazuela is another popular Chilean stew best prepared on cold winter evenings. Named after the type of pot in which it’s cooked, the stew has many variations, but usually has chicken as its protein along with quinoa, corn, potatoes, green beans, and peppers. Other meats may also be used, like beef, turkey, or pork, and rice or noodles can be added for a heartier, more filling stew. Locals are passionate about this popular comfort food and tend to have their own favorite variations.

In many variations, the meat and vegetables are either cut into large chunks or left whole while cooking in the delicious broth. Some people cut up the meat and vegetables in the bowl and eat them together with the broth, but it’s customary to eat all of the broth first, followed by meat and vegetables.

3. Sopaipilla

Pumpkin is a popular squash ingredient in Chilean cooking. It’s used in porotos granados con pilco, sometimes added in cazuela, and one of the key ingredients in sopaipillas, a disc-shaped fried dough snack usually eaten after meals and a popular street food. They can also be triangular- or square-shaped. Like a pumpkin fritter, sopaipillas are made by combining flour, pumpkin, water, and salt, resulting in a crisp and light pastry that can be made sweet or salty with other additions.

For a sweet after-dinner snack, Chileans will often sprinkle sugar on top of sopaipillas or dip them in chancaca (black beet sugar sauce). Alternatively, they can be eaten with pebre, a hot chili pepper sauce with cilantro, onions, garlic, green hot chili pepper, salt, and oil. There are many variations of sopaipilla throughout Latin America, but the addition of cooked pumpkin is unique to Chile.

4. Curanto

Curanto is more of a cooking process than the name of a dish, but it’s something all foodies should experience on a trip to Chile. A centuries-old preparation popularized by Mapuche communities in southern Chile, it involves steaming meat, fish, and vegetables using hot stones in a hole dug in the ground. In its most authentic form, the food is placed on rhubarb leaves, which lay on top of the heated stones, and cook for several hours covered in additional leaves and soil.

Essentially a surf-and-turf dish, the curanto usually features chicken, sausage, shellfish (clams or mussels), and potatoes. It is a communal meal that usually brings together families who bring their own ingredients, resulting in slight variations every time.

5. Arrollado de Huaso

Also popular in southern Chile, arrollado de huaso is a boiled pork roll prepared with bacon, spices, and chili served with a chili pepper sauce (huaso) and fresh avocado salsa. Pork meat pulp is the primary source of meat in the roll; Chileans in southern regions try to make use of all animal parts to survive the colder winter seasons. The mixture of meat and spices is rolled in pork skin and cooked in a flavorful broth.

6. Completo

While many people associate hot dogs with the United States, Chile also has its own authentic variation of the popular street food. A Chilean staple for more than a century, the completo hot dog was inspired by the US version but is larger and known for an abundance of toppings, which include avocado, onion, sauerkraut, and tomato. The Italiano, which features tomato, mayonnaise, and avocado, is a particularly popular variation, while other creative toppings include fries, scrambled eggs, and green beans.

The hot dog has become so popular that Chileans celebrate it every year on May 24 as part of Completo Day.