In addition to the ingredients, Guatemalans are very culturally conservative about how many ingredients they use when making food. This means that a typical stew is only made with a little salt, one piece of chicken, one vegetable and one starch, typically rice, which are then all boiled together in a big pot over a wood-fire oven. Of course, there can be a lot of variation, but if you add too much to the stew, it becomes another dish called Pepian, which is an advanced form of caldo de pollo with a lot more ingredients. It is equally amazing, but unfortunately, I do not have a picture of it to share with you. Finally, after you have prepared the stew and it has been served, you always accompany it with a side of homemade corn tortillas and picante.
As stated earlier, all the ingredients you will find in caldo de pollo have been grown in Guatemala. Not only that, most of the time, the ingredients are grown locally in the same community, even within the same family. In this note, you will see some pictures of market day, which, in my community, is every Wednesday and Saturday. On these days, families from all over the surrounding villages come together to the center of town to sell their produce. You can choose to buy a lot of your ingredients here, but because caldo de pollo is such a simple dish to make, you can also try your luck buying from your family. A lot of Guatemalan families, especially in my community, have family farms. A lot of these farms grow corn, the most important crop in all of Guatemala, and a couple of them have their fair share of livestock, such as chickens or pigs.
