Arepas from Venezuela are the 26th meal in my climb towards 30 meals from 30 different countries. These amazing little Venezuelan sandwiches were tasty and fun to make, but I definitely learned some lessons for next time.
Arepas are pretty basic, a meat filling (I made Carne Mechada, or shredded beef with peppers and onions), cheese (shredded mozzarella) and the Arepa (the bun/shell on the outside). I also served this with some homemade chimichurri sauce.
The carne mechada is made by braising flank steak in beef broth with oregano, onions and garlic. This is then shredded and mixed with sautéed onion and peppers, tomato puree and cooked down. The arepas are made by making a dough with masa harina (precooked corn flour). First you pan-fry the dough until its golden brown, then throw it oven to cook through. For the chimichurri I combined chopped parsely, olive oil, salt, oregano, chopped garlic, red wine vinegar and Aleppo pepper flakes and let it rest for a few hours (I really wish I kept track of amounts because this was so good). Once the arepas are cooked through you cut them in half and just put the meat and cheese on, put it in the oven until the cheese is melted and serve with chimichurri on the side.
So while this was incredibly tasty, I did run into one small issue. The liquid from the carne mechada ended up soaking into the arepas, making them a little soggy. This could have been two issues, maybe I needed to reduce the carne mechada down more so it wasn’t as liquid-y, or maybe I didn’t quite cook the arepas long enough; so they were a little too absorbent. I had leftovers so I tried fixing this by toasting the inside of the arepas in a pan, which was a huge improvement but still not a perfect solution, so I’ll have to see if I can get it better next time.
These super cheesy flavourful arepas were great and I can’t believe they are my 26th meal! As always more pictures and the updated map can be found below. Thanks for reading and see you here at 27!
Cheers,
Brandon
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