El Salvador’s beloved national dish, pupusas, are as delicious as they are customizable. Inside a thick corn tortilla are ingredients like queso con loroco, refried beans, and chicharrón. A tangy salsa roja and/or curtido top off the dish.
Back in the day (2010), Martha Stewart visited Solber Pupusas at the Red Hook Food Vendor’s Marketplace, where a long line of people waited for their “cornmeal cakes.” Thankfully, she invited the amazing chefs behind Solber to guide her through making the Salvi fave. Cesar Fuentes gave Martha some history before he talked her through the process of making the pupusas.
And once she got started, Martha realized that Salvadoran cooking is not for the weak. “No spoons allowed,” Martha said, as she mixed the masa by hand. Unfortunately, you won’t see Martha try to flip the pupusas by hand, but you can take a little pleasure in her slightly stumbling to get it right.
At the end of the segment, she tells the crowd that the cooks brought one pupusa for everyone. Clearly, she doesn’t know that they are meant to be eaten in at least pairs, and where’s curtido? But it certainly went a lot better than when Emeril Lagasse tried his hand at it and made baby-sized pupusas that he called puh-poop-ish.