Mote de Queso
Caribbean comfort in a bowl: white yam simmered until it turns the soup creamy, finished with salty cheese, hogao and lime.
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 1 h
- total
- 1 h 20 min
- serves
- 6
- level
- medium
Mote de queso comes from the Caribbean coast around Córdoba and Sucre, and it does something clever: the ñame, a white yam, collapses as it cooks and thickens the soup by itself, no cream anywhere.
Into that silkiness go cubes of queso costeño, a firm salty cheese that softens but holds its shape, plus hogao and a hit of lime. Salt, acid, starch. It should not be this good and it is.
Mote de queso is number 16 on our list of the top 20 famous Colombian foods.
method
Peel the ñame with oiled hands or a towel; it is slippery. Cut it into chunks.
Boil the chunks in the water with a little salt for 30 to 40 minutes, until they are falling apart.
Whisk or mash roughly in the pot so part of the yam dissolves into a creamy base while some chunks survive.
Meanwhile make the hogao: cook the spring onions in the oil until soft, add the tomatoes and garlic, and cook for 10 minutes until jammy.
Stir the hogao and the lime juice into the soup.
Add the cheese cubes and simmer for 5 minutes, just until they soften at the edges. Taste before salting. Serve hot, with rice and a spoon of suero if you have it.
chef's tips
- Find ñame at Latin, African or Asian grocers sold as white yam. Taro comes closest if you cannot.
- The cheese goes in at the end. Longer and it melts away instead of staying in soft salty chunks.
- The lime is not a garnish; it is what wakes the whole soup up. Do not skip it.