Mayan Cuisine, Agriculture & Farming

Mayan Food

Here is a rather ambitious title on a very broad subject. Talking about Mayan Cuisine is a bit like talking about French, English or Italian cuisine. Each region has its geography, its weather, so a different agriculture and necessarily each region has its culinary specialties.

Mayan Cuisine

Living in Akumal. A village located between Playa Del Carmen and Tulum, on the Mayan Riviera, but also very close to the Yucatan region, I will focus on Mayan cuisine from Yucatan and Quintana Roo.

Mayan Agriculture

To begin, I will talk a bit about Mayan agriculture and the basic ingredients of Maya recipes “The 3 sister seeds”. Then I will touch on the basis of Maya’s food “La Masa” and finish with the part of the meat in Maya’s food: its origin and which animals are domesticated and raised by the Maya.

A few words for the beginning of an adventure towards more recipes and culinary pleasures.

What did the Mayans Grow?

Mayan Food and Farming

For thousands of years the Mayans have followed the same way of cultivating the land. A combination of three seeds called “3 sister seeds” that are found throughout the Americas, from Canada to Mexico (where they originate) to South America.

What are the 3 sisters in Mayan Food?

The Corn

Let’s lay the bases, wheat and barley are native to the Middle East and the food base in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Rice comes from South Asia and develops on the same continent initially. As for maize, it comes from Central America, Mexico and was originally grown by the Mayas. As you can see, the Maize seed is the agricultural base of the Mayas and our first sister.
Let’s move on to the second sister.

Mayan Beans

If you have ever visited the Yucatan Peninsula, you have certainly noticed that in 80% of the dishes you eat in local restaurants, one of the side dishes is beans. This is our second seed. Beans are climbing plants that will use the high solid stems of maize as growth promoters. Moreover the roots of these legumes bring the necessary nitrogen to the growth of these 2 sisters. Already this is the beginning of a super combination.
Which brings us to our last seed, the third sister.

Third Sister

This plant is a creeper with an impressive foliage as much by the size of its leaves as by their quantity. The fact that it spreads on the soil, decreases the growth of the weeds. The giant leaves provide perfect protection for her sisters’ roots from the elements (providing shade from the sun and an umbrella against heavy rains and limiting the damage of runoff on the earth). The dense foliage of cucurbitaceae is similar to mulching, (putting straw on cultivated soils). This process is used because it considerably reduces evaporation and limits watering requirements.

As you understand, we have our 3 sisters:
corn, beans and squash.

Which become the staples of Maya recipes and Meso-American food.

Mayan Traditions

There are many ancient traditions associated with food especially corn. Far too much to go into here.

How do you get Masa?

Talking about Mayan cooking also means talking about chemistry. Although I am not necessarily a professional in this field, I will do my best to explain to you in a simple way what “nixtamalization” is and how this process is implemented, and obviously the different uses of the finished product.

What is Nixtamalization?

Nixtamalization is a meso-American cooking process. It involves cooking corn kernels in an alkaline solution. The Mayas add lime or fresh wood ash to the cooking water of the corn. The grains are boiled, then left to soak for a minimum of one night and maximum 3 days, in this lime water. This process destroys bacteria, increases water imbibition by maize and gelatinizes starch particles, and improves the nutritional value of maize by making vitamin B3 available.

Is Nixtamal Masa?

The corn kernels, after being cooked and soaked, are rinsed and cleaned of their film before being crushed in a manual mill. The dough that comes out of this mill is called “the nixtamal” or “Masa” (pronounced Massa). Important to understand, this dough cannot be obtained if the grains are not cooked in an alkaline solution. As I said, this process increases the gelatinization of starch, which increases the adhesion of particles to each other to make it simple. The result, the nixtamal, is then used, you expect, to make corn tortillas, but not that.

What is Masa used for?

There are a lot of recipes here in Mexico made from “Masa”. It can be used to make the atole, a thick soup. The dough is heated with water and milk, if you add Mexican chocolate and some other spices to this preparation you will get champurrado, drink consumed by the Mayans for breakfast. Packed in banana leaves, Hominy (Masa) dough will be cooked in Pib or boiled and become tamales.

I can still write hours and give you more names of dishes made from this dough, but let’s keep a few surprises for future articles.

Let’s move on to our last part, the meat and its place in the Mayan diet.

What did the Mayans Hunt?

Meat and its place in the Mayan Diet

Finally, let’s talk about meat and to do this I will answer the following questions: What meat did the Maya eat? Where do they come from? Which animal was domesticated in Mexico?

A bit of history

In the modern Mayan Cuisine, Yucatan food and of course Mexican food, there are many dishes based on beef, pork or chicken, but all its meats, as well as goat and sheep were introduced by the European in the 16th century. So these dishes could not be prepared with these meats. Even if they did not have pork, they had and still have peccary (I have seen some near my house during my walks in the jungle). This animal can be likened to wild boar; he looks a lot like him even if he is smaller.

Maya Hunters

They also hunted two kinds of cervids. The “White-tailed deer” (as the state of the same name in the USA) and a small “Mazama” deer, more particularly the Yucatan’s brown dagger. They too are smaller than the deer we can cross in Europe. There are many other game birds in the tropical rain forest of Yucatan, Belize or Guatemala, such as Tepezcuintle / Cuniculus Paca or Agouti (3 names for the same animal). The meat of Agouti is also called the “meat of the gods”, as well as the meat of the Ocellated Turkey and finally all the favorite meats of the jaguar that bears the name of Balam in Maya and is a god for the ancient Maya.

The Maya God Meat

That said, if the Ocellated Turkey is classified among the meats of the gods while the turkey itself is not considered specially intended for the gods. The difference between an ocellated turkey and an ordinary turkey is a small thing, though. The Ocellated Turkey bigger than ordinary turkeys, has the peculiarity of being able to fly, attention it does not cross kilometers, but can escape when it is driven, by flying towards branches located in height, which the Ordinary turkey can not do. It is for this very reason that the common turkey has been domesticated in Mexico while its cousin who still lives endemic in Belize in Yucatan or Guatemala has still not been domesticated.

As you can see, the meat eaten by the ancient Mayas was mostly from hunted game, or ordinary turkey until the arrival of Europeans who brought with them the oxen, chickens and other pigs. By the way, today’s Mayans do not eat meat at every meal.

I like to say that they eat like our grandparents who were peasants:
Sunday we have chicken;
Monday we eat the rest;
Tuesday we prepare chicken broth with the carcass and some vegetables.

A healthy and balanced diet.