Chileatole

The chileatole can refer to two kinds of Mexican food:

The oldest is the typical preparation of chocolate among pre-Hispanic Mexicans, which consists of roasting and grinding cocoa beans to obtain chocolate paste, which is added to an atole. This was seasoned with chili, vanilla and sometimes sweetened with honey, it was taken as a drink. Hernán Cortes in his Relationship Letters distinguished it as a very energetic drink. Due to its bitter and spicy taste, Europeans did not accept it, which led to the creation of champurrado.

In its most common meaning, chileatole refers to a modern dish from Mexico, which is basically a salty corn gruel (instead of sweet), seasoned with other ingredients, and consumed as soup.

The basic ingredients of chileatole are usually:

• Maize mass
• Water
• Grains of sweet corn
• Chile, usually chile serrano
• Cebolla
• Epazote
• Other spices

Some meat is also usually included, generally birds such as chicken or turkey. Sometimes it has cheese. In the Orizaba region, the red chileatole is usually prepared with shrimp or crab, and the green one with chito.

In cold seasons it is served in small clay pots to keep it warm.

This dish originates from the central-eastern portion of the country, and is more easily found in the states of Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Morelos, the State of Mexico, and Oaxaca.