Sopa de Caracol

Name: Sopa de Caracol
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Roatán & the Honduran Caribbean
Ingredients: 700 g conch meat, cleaned, or firm white fish and prawns; 2 limes, juiced; 800 ml coconut milk; 600 ml fish or chicken stock; 2 green plantains, one grated and one in thick chunks; 400 g yuca, peeled and in chunks; 2 onions, chopped; 8 garlic cloves, crushed; 1 red pepper, chopped; 1 tbsp grated ginger; 1 large handful culantro or coriander leaves; 1 whole habanero, left unbroken; 2 tbsp coconut oil; 2 tsp salt, or to taste; 1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper; 1 lime, in wedges

the Honduran coast's conch soup in coconut milk with green plantain, yuca and culantro, made famous by a song that crossed a continent

Origin: Roatán & the Honduran Caribbean

From the journey of Coconut.

Sopa de caracol is conch in coconut milk, and it belongs to the Garifuna and Bay Islands kitchens of the Honduran Caribbean. Conch, green plantain, yuca, and culantro go into a pot of coconut milk with lime and chilli, and the result is thick, white, and sweetly aromatic in a way that no other soup in Central America is. The conch is the difficulty. Strombus gigas, the queen conch, has flesh of a toughness that has to be dealt with directly: it is pounded flat with a mallet before it goes anywhere near a pot, and then either cooked very briefly or simmered for a long time, with the middle ground producing something like an eraser. Overfishing has made it a regulated species across the Caribbean, and Honduran conch fishing has a genuinely dangerous history among the Miskito divers of the eastern coast. The song is impossible to leave out. Banda Blanca's Sopa de Caracol, released in 1991 and built on a punta rhythm with lyrics partly in Garifuna, became one of the biggest Latin American hits of the decade and put both the dish and the word punta in front of an enormous audience. The band's own account is that the melody came from a Belizean Garifuna group, Los Profesionales, and the crediting was later disputed, which is a familiar pattern where a regional style breaks into a wider market. The green plantain here goes in twice: some grated to thicken the broth and some in chunks to be eaten. That double use is characteristic of the whole Caribbean coast from Belize to Nicaragua, and it does the work that a roux would do elsewhere.

Ingredients

Seafood

700 g conch meat, cleaned, or firm white fish and prawns
2 limes, juiced

Broth

800 ml coconut milk
600 ml fish or chicken stock

Body

2 green plantains, one grated and one in thick chunks
400 g yuca, peeled and in chunks

Aromatics

2 onions, chopped
8 garlic cloves, crushed
1 red pepper, chopped
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 large handful culantro or coriander leaves
1 whole habanero, left unbroken

To cook

2 tbsp coconut oil

Seasoning

2 tsp salt, or to taste
1 tsp coarsely ground black pepper

To serve

1 lime, in wedges

Method

Pound the conch meat flat with a mallet or the base of a heavy pan until it is noticeably thinner and softer, then cut it into strips and toss with the lime juice.
Pounding is not optional with conch. Untenderised conch stays rubbery no matter how long it cooks.
Soften the onions, pepper, garlic, and ginger in the coconut oil in a large pot for ten minutes.
Add the stock, the grated green plantain, and the yuca, and simmer for twenty minutes until the yuca is nearly tender.
The grated plantain dissolves and thickens the broth. This is the traditional thickener and nothing else is needed.
Add the plantain chunks and cook for a further ten minutes.
Pour in the coconut milk, add the salt, pepper, and the whole habanero, and bring to a bare simmer.
Never let coconut milk boil, or it separates into oil and curd and cannot be brought back.
Add the drained conch strips and simmer very gently for eight to ten minutes.
Take the pot off the heat, lift out the habanero, and press in the culantro leaves.
Cover for three minutes so the herb wilts in the residual heat.
Taste for salt and serve in deep bowls with lime wedges and, if you like, fried plantain on the side.

Notes

Pound the conch. Then cook it either under ten minutes or over an hour; the middle produces rubber. If conch is unavailable, firm white fish with prawns gives a good soup that is honestly a different one. Grated green plantain is the thickener. Never boil the coconut milk. Culantro, Eryngium foetidum, is the correct herb and is sold as recao or shado beni; coriander is the substitute and needs twice as much. The habanero goes in whole and comes out whole.

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control