Craving some comfort food? Bollitos de Maíz (Boiled Cornmeal Dumplings) is a comfort dish can be served as a side dish or in our beloved sancocho.
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Bollitos de Maíz (Boiled Cornmeal Dumplings) is one of our humble, comfort foods, a dish that can easily be forgotten amidst the plethora of other Dominican side dishes.
Origins
These dumplings are linked to the history of the Caribbean, and the immigration between the islands.
We have written more extensively about Domplines, the more common type of dumplings in our cuisine. These arrived in our country with the British island immigrants that came here to work in the sugar industry, and that we know as Cocolos.
Bollitos de maíz (by other names) are also popular in the British Caribbean islands, where they're found in a fried version, and a boiled one. Jamaican cornmeal dumplings are a staple of their cuisine. But this dish also exists in nearly identical form in Trinidad, and the Southern US, all places where our African ancestors had an important influence on the local cuisine.
How they're eaten
These cornmeal dumplings are more commonly found as part of the Sancocho stew in many homes. This is how I encountered them the first time, but they are also served as a side dish, usually e some sort of guisado (stewed meat) with abundant sauce, but if you are making them to add to a sancocho, the recipe is just the same.
Bear in mind that these do not have the creamy, more pasta-like texture of domplines, even when well-cooked, these are closer to the consistency of a piece of boiled plantain.
About our recipe
This is not a dish that was part of my family repertoire, in fact, I first encountered it when I moved south to Santo Domingo. Bollitos de maíz --and "domplines" in general-- are more common in the south, as this is where the majority of recent inter-island immigrants settled.
This is a fairly standard recipe, and while there can be some variations between homes, it won't be a major departure from the one I present you. A popular version is bollitos con coco, but it's not the kind that can be added to sancocho, and we'll get to that recipe on another occassion.
One departure from the traditional version is adding flour to the mix, a trick I learned to foolproof this recipe (most of the time people have a problem with this recipe is because they break down in the water. Adding flour does not affect the flavor, but increases the cooking time.
If you have a different way of making and serving Bollitos de Maíz, I'd love to hear it.
Buen provecho!
Bollitos de Maíz Recipe (Boiled Cornmeal Dumplings)
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups of fine grain cornmeal
- ½ cup all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- ¾ cup of boiling-hot water (more for adding to the broth)
- 2 tablespoons of butter (or vegetable oil).
- 2 qt [2 lt] of vegetable or chicken broth salted to taste
Instructions
- Mix dry ingredients: Mix cornmeal, salt, and sugar, salt. Stir to mix well.
- Make the dough: Add the boiling hot water and proceed to mix well right away using a spatula. Add butter to the mix and combine.
- Make the bollitos: Let the dough cool enough that you can handle it. Take two tablespoons of the mix and form into dumplings, about ¾" (2 cm) in diameter, squeezing to compress them well. Repeat with the remaining dough. You should obtain around 16.
- Cook the bollitos: Heat broth over medium heat until it breaks into a gentle boil. Place the dumplings gently into the broth one by one (careful with splatters!). Do not initially stir or disturb them, once they've been boiling for at least 10 minutes you can stir to make sure they cook evenly.Cook for 1 hour, or until cooked-through (you can cut one in half to check for doneness at the 45-minute mark, cook for an extra 15 mins if needed). Add water as needed to maintain the same level. If you are going to use them for sancocho, skip this step and just add them uncooked to the preparation at the point in which the water in the sancocho starts to boil.
I love this dish so much :-), but i never attempted to make it as my mother always made it for me. I love the taste of it with bacalao en cebolla. one thing I always find hard about this dish is that even when my mother makes then somethings… Read more »
Clara it´s true what Richard said, that was the way my Grandma used to cook it. She also added grated coconut and coconut milk, and that was ¡great!!!
These are very good with Puerto Rican style beans and with cod fish too.
Thank you for the recipe! it was exactly what I was looking for.