By Sikil pak: Mayan pumpkin seed dip
A pre-Hispanic dip of toasted pumpkin seeds, roasted tomato and habanero. No dairy, no oil, and probably the oldest recipe on this site.
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 15 min
- Makes
- about 2 cups
- Difficulty
- Easy
You taste the chile, it does not burn. Below a jalapeño.
Ingredients
Makes about 2 cups
- 1½ cups pumpkin seeds raw, hulled, unsalted
- 3 medium tomato
- 1 habanero charred whole
- ¼ red onion finely diced, to finish
- 3 tbsp cilantro
- 2 tbsp juice orange sour orange, or lime
- 1½ tsp salt
- ½ to ¾ cup water
- 1 tbsp juice lime (optional)
Keeps 5 days refrigerated
Method
- 1
Toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring constantly, 4 to 6 minutes. They will pop, swell and turn golden. Pull them off the moment they smell nutty — burnt pepitas make the whole dip bitter and there is no recovering it.
- 2
Let them cool completely. Warm seeds blend into a paste that seizes; cool ones grind to powder.
- 3
Char the tomatoes and the whole habanero on a dry comal or under a broiler, turning, until blackened in patches all over — about 10 minutes for the tomatoes, 4 for the chile.
- 4
Grind the cooled pumpkin seeds alone in the blender first, until they are a fine meal. Doing this before anything wet goes in is what gives the dip its smooth texture.
- 5
Add the charred tomatoes with their skins, the habanero, the sour orange juice and the salt. Blend, adding water a little at a time, until it is the texture of hummus.
- 6
Taste for salt and acid. Transfer to a bowl and top with the diced red onion and cilantro. Serve at room temperature.
Good with
Tortilla chips · Jicama and cucumber sticks · As a spread in tortas · Grilled fish
Probably the oldest recipe on this site. Sikil p’ak is Maya — sikil for pumpkin seed, p’ak for tomato — and it predates the arrival of dairy, wheat and pork in the Americas by a long way.
It is also, without trying to be, vegan, gluten free and made of four ingredients you can buy in any US supermarket. It tends to surprise people who expect a Mexican dip to involve cheese or cream.
Toasting the seeds is the whole recipe
Everything else here is straightforward. This step is where it succeeds or fails.
Raw pepitas taste of almost nothing. Toasted correctly they turn deeply nutty and sweet, and that flavor is the entire foundation of the dish. Burnt, they turn bitter — and the bitterness spreads through the whole batch with no way to correct it.
Medium heat, constant stirring, four to six minutes. They will pop and swell like small popcorn. Take them off the heat when they smell nutty and look barely golden, because they keep cooking in the hot pan.
If you are unsure, err early. Under-toasted is a bland dip. Over-toasted is one you throw away.
Let them cool, then grind them dry
Two separate instructions, both easy to skip and both important.
Cool: warm seeds are oily and blend into a seized paste rather than a powder.
Dry: grind the seeds alone, to a fine meal, before any liquid goes in. If you add the tomatoes at the same time, the seeds never break down properly and the dip comes out gritty. This is the single difference between a silky sikil pak and a grainy one.
Char, do not roast
The tomatoes want to be blackened in patches, not gently roasted. Dry comal, broiler or open flame, turning until the skins split and blister.
The skins go into the blender. That char is where the smoky flavor comes from, and peeling them throws it away — the opposite of what you do with a poblano.
Charring the habanero whole does something useful too: it takes most of the aggression out of it and leaves the floral aroma, which is why one whole habanero makes a dip that is barely hot.
The texture to aim for
Hummus. Thick enough to hold a scoop, loose enough to spread.
Add the water gradually, because it firms up considerably in the fridge — a dip that looks right warm will be a paste cold. If it sets too thick, a spoonful of water brings it straight back.
What it goes with
Tortilla chips, obviously. But it is better with jicama and cucumber sticks, where the cold crunch plays against the dense, nutty dip.
It is also an excellent sandwich spread, and it goes well next to grilled fish.
Keeping it
Five days refrigerated, and it improves overnight. Thin with water and re-check the salt before serving, and add the onion and cilantro fresh each time rather than stirring them in at the start.
Common questions
How old is this recipe?
Pre-Hispanic — it predates the arrival of dairy, wheat, pork and citrus in the Americas. The version most people make now uses sour orange, which the Spanish brought, so it is not identical to what was eaten a thousand years ago. But pumpkin seed, tomato and chile is the original core, and it is the oldest preparation on this site by a wide margin.
Which pumpkin seeds do I buy?
Raw, hulled, unsalted — sold in US stores as pepitas, usually in the bulk or baking aisle. Green, not the white-shelled kind you carve out of a Halloween pumpkin. Roasted salted ones will work in a pinch but you lose control of both the toast and the salt.
Mine turned out bitter.
The seeds burned. Pepitas go from golden to scorched in under thirty seconds and the bitterness is not fixable — it runs through the whole batch. Use medium heat, stir without stopping, and take the pan off while they still look slightly underdone. They keep toasting in the residual heat.
Is it spicy?
Barely. One habanero charred whole, blended into two cups, comes out around level 1 — you notice a warmth and the chile's floral aroma more than any real burn. Charring mellows habanero considerably. For a hot version, add a second one.
Can I make it ahead?
Yes, and it is better on day two. It thickens overnight, so thin it with a spoonful of water and check the salt before serving. Add the onion and cilantro topping fresh.