Sopes Estilo Sinaloa
If you ask me which is my favourite Mexican dish, without a doubt it is my mum’s Sinaloa Sopes. They are these little masa round patties top with lots of delicious vegetables and shredded beef and then they are bath with the most amazing consommé ever!
These type of sopes are very popular in the north of Mexico, especially in Sinaloa and Nayarit. The meat is cooked for hours until is very tender to shred, then it is mix with mashed potato and this is the filling for the sopecitos (little sope). My mum’s family is from Sinaloa, so a lot of the recipes that I write on the blog are from that region.
I grew up spending my holidays in Culiacan in my grandma’s house and every time we were there, my aunties and her would always cook our favourite things for us.
Sopes Estilo Sinaloa
Ingredients
To make the filling
- 350 g beef brisket
- 2 small pieces of bone marrow
- 2 tomatoes cut in half
- ½ white onion peeled
- 2 garlic cloves peeled
- 1 tbsp salt
- water enough to cover the meat
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
- ½ tsp dried oregano
- 1 large potato cooked, peleed and mashed
To make the sopes and fry
- 200 g nixtamalised Mexican corn flour
- 200 ml warm water
- 100 ml brisket broth
- ¼ white onion grated
- 1 tsp garlic salt
- 1 cup vegetable oil
To garnish
- 2 cups iceberg lettuce finely shredded
- 2 small carrots peeled and grated
- 5 radishes cut in thin slices
- ½ cucumber peeled, seed off and cut in thin half moons
- 1 perfectly ripe avocado peel and cut in thin slices
- 1 cup feta cheese grated
- ½ cup sour cream add a splash of milk
- ½ cup red onion thinly sliced and pickled
- spicy salsa of your choice
To make the pickled red onion
- ½ red onion thinly sliced
- 2 limes
- 1 tsp table salt
- ¼ dried oregano
Instructions
To cook the meat and make the broth
- Place the brisket, bone, tomatoes, onion, garlic, salt and water in a casserole dish, place in a preheated oven to 160° C and cook for 2 hours or until the meat is very tender that if falls apart easily.
- Then take the piece of meat out and wait for it to cool down and shred the beef into thinly strings and chop it to small pieces and set aside. Mix it with the mashed potato and add ½ tsp salt. Set aside.
- Remove the tomatoes, onion and garlic cloves and place them in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour it back to the broth and add the tomato puree, dried oregano and remove the pieces of bone marrow. Bring the broth to a boil and turn it off and set aside to use later.
To make the masa and the sopes
- In a large bowl put the nixtamalised corn flour, add the garlic salt, chopped onion and start adding the water and the broth bit by bit, mix until you form a dough. Mix the dough until it feels moist but it keeps a shape; remember you are going to do some small patties with the dough, so if it too loose, the patties won’t keep its shape but the same thing will happen if the dough is too dry.
- After you get the right dough consistency, heat a large pan and make 9 corn dough balls and start making the patties around 12 cm in diameter and 4 mm thick, put each pattie on the hot pan and cook on each side for about 5 min flipping them from time to time, to avoid the sides to get dry. They are cooked when they look firm and cooked
- Once cooked, take them out and let them cool slightly and with your hands, pinch the edges of each pattie to form like a little corn dough plate. This is a sope.
- Just before serving, heat some vegetable oil and fry them.
To make pickled red onion
- Add the table salt over the thinly sliced onion and mix.
- Leave aside for 10 minutes and then rinse the excess of salt.
- Place it in a bowl and squeeze the juice of the limes and add the dried oregano and pinch of salt. Leave aside to let it pickled.
To serve the sopes estilo Sinaloa
- On a plate put the sopes then on top put the beef and potato filling, then some shredded lettuce, follow by grated carrot, 2 avocado slices, 3 cucumber slices, 4 radish slices, some feta cheese crumbled, some sour cream and at the end some pickled onion.
- Add some salsa if you want some heat on your sopes. Serve the consomme in a separate cup. Some people like to add the some consomme to each sope or other people, like me, add all the consomme at once. Enjoy!
I would love to hear if you liked this recipe, tag me on social media #mexicanfoodmemories to see your creations. And if you want to learn to make this recipe and more, join me in one of my Mexican Cooking Classes in north London.
Listo!
Provecho!
