![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Gallo-Pinto.jpg\")
<\/p>\nYou\u2019ve just arrived in Nicaragua and you’re looking for the top things to eat in Nicaragua because that peanut butter jar that you, the savvy traveler, have packed\u00a0is down to its last spoonful. Your heart sinks when you realize that maybe they don\u2019t sell peanut butter in Nicaragua. Pangs of hunger remind you of the deep animal urges that govern you.<\/p>\n
You hold your beckoning belly and look out into a busy market of street food vendors. You gaze down another cobblestone street in Granada full of restaurants, ready to jump into the local cuisine. Since peanut butter is no longer going to be on the menu for your trip, what can you expect to be filling your plate and gut with this trip?<\/p>\n
To get a sense of the unique food here, with its Spanish, Creole and indigenous influences, here are the top ten\u00a0Nicaraguan dishes for you to eat\u00a0while in the country.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Literally, painted chicken, gallo pinto is the staple food in most Nicaraguan\u2019s diet. Never have grains of rice danced with so\u00a0much flavor\u00a0with frijoles.”How could this be,”\u00a0you ask yourself, thinking, it\u2019s just rice and beans?\u00a0But Maria, the cook who made them, has a coy, culinary smile on her face, and now you know, Maria is magic, and so are the rice and beans in Nicaragua, tasting in a way\u00a0no one ever imagined they could. On the Caribbean coast, they mix the rice and beans with coconut. Is it any wonder then why people\u00a0there walk with a satisfied swagger and often burst out into random song?<\/p>\n
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The tongue is for tasting and storytelling, and indio viejo (old indian<\/em>) is a dish peppered with legend. As the story goes, a huddle of indigenous Nicaraguans had just prepared a feast of indio viejo when a group of Spanish conquistadors came by and asked them, \u201cDamn, what smells so good?\u201d The Nicaraguans, suspecting that the Spanish had come to mooch off them, told them that an old Indian had just died and that they were serving him up with tortillas, sending the Spanish along their hungry way.<\/p>\n Indio viejo is actually a delicious, heavy meal that takes several hours to prepare. Using a fatty piece of beef as a base, it is made with onion, sweet chili, garlic, salt, tortillas, pig fat, hierbabuena<\/em>\u00a0and sour orange \u2014 the perfect plate of gluttony, served just before a nap in one of the ubiquitous rocking chairs creaking across the country.<\/p>\n For brave travelers not currently reading The Lord of the Flies<\/em>, pebre is a dish consisting of pig head and other pig parts that the cook happens to have laying around such as liver, ears, tongue, face meat, skin and feet. Throw in some onion, garlic and achiote<\/a>, mix in some rice into the soup, and you not only have a meal that would satisfy a rogue black bear, but something to tweet home about.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a simple secret to the corn in Nicaragua, which adds a second level of flavorful fantastic. It\u2019s all in the second cooking. The corn is cooked in its husk and then reheated on a grill when it\u2019s ready to serve, which allows it to retain much of its flavor. Expect\u00a0lime and salt to be added for flavor.<\/p>\n Locally called tostones<\/em>, it is this writer\u2019s opinion that Nicaragua makes them better than anywhere else in the Latin American world. Not mushy like the Guatemalan variety, is it any wonder that the letters from crunchy, jungle-grown\u00a0tostones\u00a0<\/em>can be rearranged to read as \u201cTootness!\u201d\u2014\u00a0<\/em>which is the nonsensical word you exclaim when you try them.<\/p>\n Along the market roads of Nicaragua, you will inevitably come across a vendor selling little packages wrapped in leaves. Inside these leaves, which are not edible, are meat, rice, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and sweet pepper, all cooked in a dough made of ground corn and butter. Nacatamal is boiled for five hours in the leaves, and can easily be consumed in less than five seconds if you put your mind to it.<\/p>\n Served around the Christmas holidays, \u00a0the conversation\u00a0goes\u00a0like this:<\/p>\n Tomato Soup:<\/strong> Sopa Borracha, me and the chicken noodle think that you have a problem.<\/p>\n Sopa Borracha:<\/strong> Cinnamon! Sugar!<\/p>\n Tomato Soup<\/strong>: You can\u2019t go on like this. Are you soup or alcohol?<\/p>\n Sopa Borracha:<\/strong> I came for Christmas! I am not even soup, silly tomato pur\u00e9e, I’m actually an alcohol-soaked bread. I laugh in the face of soup. I am a special blend of liquor, soaked in porous\u00a0bread, mixed with coffee for power! My bread includes cinnamon, liquor, sugar and water and I taste like Christmas, and I pity the sober fool consuming anything other than me.<\/p>\n Sopa de Rosquillas (Donut Soup)<\/strong> \u2013 Because it is time to think outside of the bowl. Drunken Soup\u2019s best friend since forever, donut soup, is made with corn donuts mushed into a sweet base. It\u2019s great because \u2014 do I really need to explain? It\u2019s soup made out of donuts and haven\u2019t we been subconsciously craving this for years?<\/p>\n Now, it’s time for desert, and travelers to Nicaragua talk about Tres Leches like European backpackers speak about Nutella:\u00a0in hushed, reverent tones that always end with the entreating question, \u201cDo you have any?\u201d Tres Leches is made with three kinds of milk \u2014 straight-up normal milk, condensed milk and cream. After that, throw some sugar, flour eggs and meringue in the mix and you are eating a dish that many a Nicaraguan child\u00a0has stayed up all night dreaming about.<\/p>\n Ask a Nicaragua to choose between Pinolillo, a corn flour\/cacoa-based beverage, and the person they love the most, and they won\u2019t understand the question because they are the same thing. Nicaraguans love their thick, chocolaty Pinolillo like gringos love Nicaragua. And like gringos, it can easily be found in most market stalls.<\/p>\n [Gallo Pinto by Arvind Grover\/Flickr<\/a>; Pebre by Fermentaci\u00f3n Guachaca\/Flickr<\/a>; Elotes via Shutterstock<\/a>; Fried Plantains by Brian Johnson\/Flickr<\/a>; Tres Leches by Omid Tavallai\/Flickr<\/a>]<\/p>\n By Luke Maguire Armstrong<\/strong><\/a> \/ You\u2019ve just arrived in Nicaragua and you’re looking for the top things to eat in Nicaragua because that peanut butter jar that you, the savvy traveler, have packed\u00a0is down to its last spoonful. Your heart sinks when you realize that maybe they don\u2019t sell peanut butter in Nicaragua. Pangs of hunger remind you of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":23196,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2049,1,2562,17,2583],"tags":[820,3191,3192,3188,3189,1021,3193,106,3190,3196,3194,3195],"yoast_head":"\n![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Pebre.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPebre<\/h2>\n
![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Elotes.jpg\")
<\/p>\nElotes<\/strong> (Corn on the Cob)<\/h2>\n
![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Fried-Plantain.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFried Plantains<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Nacatamel.jpg\")
<\/p>\nNacatamal<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Sopa-Borracha.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSopa Borracha (Drunken Soup)\/Sopa de Rosquillas<\/h2>\n
![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Tres-Leches.jpg\")
<\/p>\nTres Leches<\/h2>\n
![\"Top](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Pinolillo.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPinolillo<\/h2>\n
![\"TheExpeditioner\"](\"\/Images\/aboutuslogo.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"Luke](\"http:\/\/theexpeditioner.com\/Images\/Twittersmallround.png\")
<\/a><\/span> ![\"Matt](\"http:\/\/theexpeditioner.com\/Images\/Googleplussmallround.png\")
<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"LukeArmstrong\"](\"https:\/\/www.theexpeditioner.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/lukearmstrongbiopic.jpg\" "\\"lukearmstrongbiopicture\\"")
Luke Maguire Armstrong<\/a> lived in Guatemala directing the humanitarian aid organization, Nuestros Ahijados. His book of poetry, iPoems for the Dolphins to Click Home About<\/a><\/em>, is especially enjoyed by people who “don’t read poetry.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"