Chochoyotes (Small Dumplings)

A traditional Oaxacan dumpling made from corn masa, shaped by hand into small cups with a characteristic central dimple that traps broth or sauce during cooking. Diana Kennedy records this preparation in The Art of Mexican Cooking as a staple of Oaxacan home cooking — simple in composition, precise in technique, and deeply satisfying when cooked into black beans or mole. The indentation is not decorative; it creates a thinner wall that cooks through evenly and a hollow that fills with whatever liquid surrounds it, making each dumpling a vessel in its own right.

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Serves18 dumplings

Sourced0 of 2 in BC

Cook

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The Market List

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225 g (½ lb / 1 cup)

prepared corn tortilla masa

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

heaped tablespoons asiento (or substitute: lard with a small amount of bacon fat)

Not yet stocked in British Columbia

Sea salt, to taste

Your own market

The Method

Combine the masa, asiento, and salt in a bowl. Work together thoroughly until the fat is evenly incorporated and the mixture is smooth and pliable.

Divide into 18 equal portions. Roll each between your palms into a ball roughly 2.5 cm (1 inch) in diameter.

Hold a ball against the tip of your index finger and rotate it slowly, pressing down to create a deep central well. The wall around the well should be approximately 6 mm (¼ inch) thick throughout. Repeat for all 18 pieces.

Bring your broth, bean pot, or sauce to a gentle simmer — approximately 90–95°C (195–200°F). The liquid should be moving but not boiling hard.

Lower the dumplings in one at a time and push each gently below the surface. Do not crowd the pot.

Cook 15–20 minutes until the dumplings are set and cooked through. Serve immediately in whatever liquid they cooked in.

III

Sensory Tests

◇Press a finished chochoyote gently between thumb and forefinger: it should yield with light resistance and spring back slightly — a texture like a firm-cooked gnocchi, not collapsing, not bouncing. If it smears or tears, the masa was too wet or the dimple wall too thin; if it resists like rubber, it was overworked or overcooked.

◇Cut or bite a dumpling in half after cooking: the center should be fully hydrated with no raw, pale, chalky seam of dry masa. The interior color should match the surrounding broth — visibly stained by black beans or darkened by mole negro — confirming the dimple did its structural work.

◇Smell the raw masa before shaping: it should carry a clean, faintly alkaline corn aroma, possibly with a mild lactic sourness if it has rested. Any sour-sharp or off-fermented smell indicates masa that has held too long and will produce an unpleasant, acidic dumpling.

◇Where it lives or dies. The dish lives or dies at the moment of shaping: the dimple must be pressed deep enough — roughly halfway through the dumpling's depth — to create a genuinely thinner wall that cooks evenly and a true hollow that fills with liquid, but not so deep that the base becomes fragile and splits open in the pot. A chochoyote that closes up during cooking or cracks at the base was shaped incorrectly, and no quality of surrounding broth will compensate.

IV · Cross-Cuisine Parallels

malloreddus — Italian (Sardinian) — Both are small, hand-shaped dumplings built from a grain-based dough — semolina in the Sardinian case, nixtamalized corn masa here — where shaping technique (the ridged curl of malloreddus, the dimple of chochoyotes) is not ornamental but functional, designed to trap and carry sauce or broth into each individual piece. spaetzle — German (Swabian) — Like chochoyotes cooked directly in a bean pot or mole, Swabian Spaetzle are traditionally finished in the fat or broth of the dish they accompany, absorbing surrounding flavors rather than arriving as a neutral side. Both traditions treat the dumpling as a component of a unified pot rather than a separate starch. khinkali — Georgian — Khinkali and chochoyotes share the structural logic of the dumpling-as-vessel: in khinkali the pleated top traps broth inside the meat filling; in chochoyotes the dimple traps surrounding liquid inside the masa cup. Both dishes are considered technically failed if the vessel leaks or collapses before the cook intends it to.

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