Recado blanco
Also known as white recado, recaudo blanco, Yucatecan white seasoning paste
Paste
Quick answer
The white seasoning paste of Yucatecan cooking: pepper, oregano and garlic ground together, kept as small balls and dissolved in water or sour orange juice before use. It goes into the thickened broths called k’óol, into tamales, and beside the red achiote recado in cochinita pibil.
In essentially every version: Pepper (pimienta), Mexican oregano (written as orégano), Garlic.
What goes into it
What essentially every version is made from, with what each ingredient is there to do.
| Ingredient | Role | How essential |
|---|---|---|
| Black pepper (ground)The recipes say only pimienta. A Mérida spice seller grinds both black pepper and allspice into his red and black recados, so either may be meant here. | primary aromatic | defining |
| Mexican oreganoThe recipes write orégano and name no species. It is recorded as Mexican oregano because that is the plant the other Yucatecan recados here are recorded with; the recipes themselves do not settle it. | primary aromatic | defining |
| GarlicOne cook grinds the pepper and oregano with garlic that is already ground. | savoury depth | defining |
Two cooks of one community give the same three ingredients, pepper, oregano and garlic, and neither gives amounts. What varies in the recipes is how much is used and with what: a single ball in a pot of tamales, five balls in a bean stew, equal weights of white and red recado in cochinita pibil. No recipe from another town was read, so how far this composition holds across the peninsula is not known. A spice seller in Mérida sells a grey-brown recado for steaks beside his red and black ones; the article describing him does not say what is in it and does not call it the white recado.
The versions
Each attributed to whoever describes it. The sources say what goes in and how it is made and give no amounts, so none are shown.
Yaxché household recado blanco
Household traditionClara Itzá Mazún and Felipa de Jesús Tzu Kú, cooks of Yaxché, Valladolid, Yucatán, in two recipe collections edited by Carrillo Sánchez and Jiménez Bañuelos · no amounts given · medium confidence
Pepper, oregano and ground garlic, ground together in a hand mill. One recipe gives the method and the other lists the same three ingredients in brackets after the name. No amounts are given.
Made with: Pepper (pimienta), Mexican oregano (written as orégano), Garlic. The source gives no amounts, so none are shown.
Two cooks from one community. Which pepper is meant is not stated in either recipe.
Using it
It is dissolved before it is used. The recipes stir it into water and add it to the pot in which meat is boiling, where it seasons the broth that is then thickened with maize dough into k’óol. For grilling, one cook mixes it with sour orange juice, salt and a little lard or oil and rubs the mixture on a boiled chicken, then adds more of the same mixture to the broth. The cooks measure it in balls, bolitas, as they do the red recado.
Pepper, oregano and garlic, with nothing to colour the food. It tastes of its three ingredients.
Mild. It contains no chilli; the recipes that use it add habanero or another chilli separately.
- Sak k’óol, also called pebre: chicken with a white thickened broth
- Cochinita pibil, with the red recado
- Tamales colados, to’obil jolo’och and chachak waaj
- Mechado, a stew of pork and chicken with chickpeas
- Chimoole, a bean stew with toasted dried chilli
- Kaaxil sikil, a dish of squash-seed paste and chaya
Dish names as the recipe collections print them. All are from one community.
What to use it on
Maize
StrongIn the tamales of Yaxché the white recado is dissolved into the broth in which the meat boils, and that broth is thickened with maize dough into the k’óol that fills the tamal. One recipe uses a single ball of it for eight kilograms of dough.
How: To’obil jolo’och; Chachak waaj; Tamales colados
One community’s recipes.
Chicken
StrongFor sak k’óol, which the recipe also calls pebre, the white recado is mixed with sour orange juice, salt and a little lard or oil and rubbed on a boiled chicken, which is then grilled; more of the mixture seasons the broth, which is thickened with maize dough.
How: Sak k’óol
One cook’s recipe.
Pork
StrongA cook of Yaxché, in Yucatán, soaks equal weights of the white and the red recado in sour orange juice for cochinita pibil, 250 grams of each to six kilograms of pork, before the meat goes into the pit oven. The red paste gives the colour; the white one brings the pepper, oregano and garlic.
How: Cochinita pibil; Mechado
One community’s recipes.
Recado blanco compared
Direct comparisons with the blends and spices it is most often taken for.
Allergens and safety
Not among the substances that must be declared as allergens under EU Regulation 1169/2011 Annex II or under the United States major food allergen rules. That is a statement about labelling law and not about whether allergy occurs: allergic reactions to spices are documented in the clinical literature and are simply not a labelling category. Where a ground spice presents an allergen risk it is usually through adulteration or shared processing equipment rather than through the plant itself.
Culture and origin
The Yucatán peninsula of Mexico. The recipes read are from Maya cooks of Yaxché, a community in the municipality of Valladolid, who use it as one of the two recados they keep, the other being the red one. None of the sources read says when it began.
Yaxché, Valladolid, Yucatán
Among the Maya of Yaxché, Valladolid, Yucatán, Mexico.
In the recipes that Maya cooks of this community wrote down for two food fairs, in 2022 and 2023, the white recado is a kitchen staple named without explanation, as salt is. It appears in everyday dishes and in those cooked in the pit oven, and several recipes use it together with achiote or the red recado.
Also documented among the Maya: Achiote paste, Recado negro.
Mérida, Yucatán
Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico.
Recados are also bought ready made. An ethnographic account of a spice seller in a Mérida market describes his trade as the making of the mixtures that underlie Yucatecan cooking: black and red recados, a green paste for papadzul and a grey-brown recado for steaks, once wrapped in cellophane tied with a thread whose colour told the buyer which recado it was.
The article does not name a white recado. It is cited for the trade in recados, not for this one.