Market Stall · Herb Tamale
Tamalitos de Chipilín
📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Beltran Milton / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Chipilín, the slightly bitter legume leaf folded into the masa, is picked wild along Verapaz roadsides and wilts fast — vendors harvest it the same morning they cook.
Small corn-masa tamales flecked with chopped chipilín leaf, wrapped in mashan or banana leaf and steamed in tall stacked baskets. Vendors sell them still warm, split open and eaten plain or with tomato salsa.
Why it's made this way: Chipilín grows abundantly in the humid Verapaz lowlands, and the herb shows up here far more than in the drier Guatemalan highlands to the west.
More from Guatemala
Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries.
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