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by Luis Hernandez - 3rd place @ Sand Chef 2011, Pismo Beach, CA
With the following indications we make two arepas of a decent to small size:
- Flour (two arepas): 130 grams. This is about 3/4 of a cup but doing this by volume is less accurate since flour volume varies with a ton of things (humidity, pressure, whether you aerate it or not, shoes you are wearing, etc)
- Warm water: 225 grams (water density being 1 cc/gr, this should be 225ml if you prefer to do it by volume)
- Salt: I do eyeball this, but for the two arepas it should be about half a teaspoon.
The flour package says to use lukewarm, it use it warmer than that because it cools off when mixed with the room temperature flour.
- Start heating a pan (a non-stick one will be the easiest by now). Low heat. Without a surface thermometer it will be hard to get the ideal 450 F pan temperature, so do it low and go experimenting depending on the results you get. A pan over fire will continue to raise its temperature (it will eventually reach a limit but that's normally a somewhat high limit) so even though it is at low fire don't leave it heating for a long time, it should be good to go by the time you are done with the dough, 10 or so minutes. The thermometers are cheap and you can use them to cook anything on a pan to get consistent results.
- Pre-heat the oven; set it to 400 F; temperature is for non-convection.
- The Dough: In a bowl combine water and salt and throw the flour little by little while whisking with you other hand, this guarantees that you don't get lumps. When all the flour is in, continue moving it around, kind of kneading for about three or so minutes, it will firm up as you knead as the flour absorbs the water. This dough doesn't really need kneading like wheat based flours does but you'd want to make it uniform. Make a ball and leave it to rest for like 4 minutes or so.
- After resting, split the dough it in two equal parts. Shape them as much as you can as perfect flat cylinders of about 1.75cms. How I do this is hard to explain, I make a ball and then I flatten it out a bit by pressing with my palms and then I flatten the edges by rotating and gradually squeezing them with my hand so that the edge is touching my palm while squeezing, but whatever you do to get the final shape should work, you can use a rolling pin if that helps.
- Then they go to the pan for 5 to 6 minutes on each side, they are supposed to develop a somewhat soft crust so that they can sit on the oven grill. They might brown a little, but just a little. They actually look better with some browning.
- Then stick them on the oven. Depending on how crispy you want then leaven there from 10 to 15 minutes. The longer in the oven the crispier but if you leave them too long they might get a bit tough (just like bread does). 15 minutes should be safe on the crispiness department...They should puff out a bit.
While they cook, you can be working on other things, like whatever you are going to put inside. You might want to use a timer...
When eating them, you can take some of the dough out after opened. You can split the two sides all the way if you like but we do it so that it has an opening along half of the edge, sort of like a pocket. We put all sort of things inside, cheese, ham, eggs, meat, etc. Kind of like what you do with a sandwich.
The best is to eat them right away, but if you have leftover and want to eat them later: Arepas don't keep too well, it will harden out faster than bread, it doesn't like microwaves and fridges; you can leave them inside the cold oven or wrap them in paper or foil. When reheating them, run tap water through them for 30 seconds or so to re-hydrate them and stick them in an oven (350 to 375 F) for like 6-8 minutes...
Let me know if you liked it.
Luis
With the following indications we make two arepas of a decent to small size:
- Flour (two arepas): 130 grams. This is about 3/4 of a cup but doing this by volume is less accurate since flour volume varies with a ton of things (humidity, pressure, whether you aerate it or not, shoes you are wearing, etc)
- Warm water: 225 grams (water density being 1 cc/gr, this should be 225ml if you prefer to do it by volume)
- Salt: I do eyeball this, but for the two arepas it should be about half a teaspoon.
The flour package says to use lukewarm, it use it warmer than that because it cools off when mixed with the room temperature flour.
- Start heating a pan (a non-stick one will be the easiest by now). Low heat. Without a surface thermometer it will be hard to get the ideal 450 F pan temperature, so do it low and go experimenting depending on the results you get. A pan over fire will continue to raise its temperature (it will eventually reach a limit but that's normally a somewhat high limit) so even though it is at low fire don't leave it heating for a long time, it should be good to go by the time you are done with the dough, 10 or so minutes. The thermometers are cheap and you can use them to cook anything on a pan to get consistent results.
- Pre-heat the oven; set it to 400 F; temperature is for non-convection.
- The Dough: In a bowl combine water and salt and throw the flour little by little while whisking with you other hand, this guarantees that you don't get lumps. When all the flour is in, continue moving it around, kind of kneading for about three or so minutes, it will firm up as you knead as the flour absorbs the water. This dough doesn't really need kneading like wheat based flours does but you'd want to make it uniform. Make a ball and leave it to rest for like 4 minutes or so.
- After resting, split the dough it in two equal parts. Shape them as much as you can as perfect flat cylinders of about 1.75cms. How I do this is hard to explain, I make a ball and then I flatten it out a bit by pressing with my palms and then I flatten the edges by rotating and gradually squeezing them with my hand so that the edge is touching my palm while squeezing, but whatever you do to get the final shape should work, you can use a rolling pin if that helps.
- Then they go to the pan for 5 to 6 minutes on each side, they are supposed to develop a somewhat soft crust so that they can sit on the oven grill. They might brown a little, but just a little. They actually look better with some browning.
- Then stick them on the oven. Depending on how crispy you want then leaven there from 10 to 15 minutes. The longer in the oven the crispier but if you leave them too long they might get a bit tough (just like bread does). 15 minutes should be safe on the crispiness department...They should puff out a bit.
While they cook, you can be working on other things, like whatever you are going to put inside. You might want to use a timer...
When eating them, you can take some of the dough out after opened. You can split the two sides all the way if you like but we do it so that it has an opening along half of the edge, sort of like a pocket. We put all sort of things inside, cheese, ham, eggs, meat, etc. Kind of like what you do with a sandwich.
The best is to eat them right away, but if you have leftover and want to eat them later: Arepas don't keep too well, it will harden out faster than bread, it doesn't like microwaves and fridges; you can leave them inside the cold oven or wrap them in paper or foil. When reheating them, run tap water through them for 30 seconds or so to re-hydrate them and stick them in an oven (350 to 375 F) for like 6-8 minutes...
Let me know if you liked it.
Luis
.