Edam is not from here, and nobody in Yucatán pretends otherwise. It arrived through the ports as a cheese that traveled well, sealed in wax, and it stayed because it does something useful: aged and salty, it holds its shape long enough to be hollowed out, filled and steamed. In Mérida and Valladolid markets it is sold simply as queso de bola, stacked in red spheres, and a good part of what is sold goes into this dish.
Queso relleno is festive food. It appears at weddings, baptisms, village fiestas and the long Sunday comidas where somebody has decided to cook properly, and it is one of the few Yucatecan dishes that is almost always plated with two sauces at once. The filling is a picadillo of pork with raisins, olives, capers, almonds, and a hard-boiled egg, seasoned with recado blanco, the ground mixture of pepper, cloves, cumin, oregano, and cinnamon that also goes into puchero. Over the top goes kol, a pale sauce of pork broth thickened with masa, and beside it chiltomate, roasted tomato with charred habanero.
The taste is strange on paper and obvious on the plate. The cheese turns mild and milky as it softens, salty at the edges where the rind has browned. The filling is sweet and briny at once, warm with cloves, never sugary. The kol is bland on purpose, a buffer, and the chiltomate cuts through all of it. Eaten with hot corn tortillas, spooning a little of everything together.
Two things go wrong most often. The first is heat: a steamed or gently baked dish, and if the oven is too hot, the ball collapses and releases a pool of oil. The second is the walls. Scooping too deep leaves a shell that cannot stand up, and scooping too shallow leaves no room for the filling. About a centimeter of cheese all round, no less. Also, do not salt the picadillo until you have tasted it with the cheese, because an aged queso de bola brings plenty of its own saltiness.
Ingredients
40 items · for 6For the cheese
- 1 whole ball of Edam, about 1.8 kg, wax removed
- 1 large banana leaf, or a square of clean muslin, for wrapping
- String, for tying
For the pork and broth
- 800 g pork shoulder, in two or three large pieces
- 1 small white onion, halved
- 4 garlic cloves, unpeeled
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 litres water
For the recado blanco (or use 1 heaped tbsp shop-bought)
- 2 tsp black peppercorns
- 8 whole cloves
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tbsp dried Mexican oregano
- 1 piece cinnamon stick, about 3 cm
- 3 garlic cloves, peeled
- 2 tbsp cider vinegar
- 1/2 tsp salt
For the picadillo
- 3 tbsp lard or neutral oil
- 1 large white onion, finely chopped (about 180 g)
- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 600 g ripe tomatoes, chopped (about 3 cups)
- 1 x'catic or güero chile, left whole (optional)
- 70 g raisins (1/2 cup)
- 70 g green olives, pitted and sliced (1/2 cup)
- 2 tbsp capers, rinsed
- 60 g blanched almonds, roughly chopped (1/2 cup)
- 5 eggs, hard boiled and chopped
- 1 tbsp cider vinegar
- Salt, to taste, added last
For the kol
- 1 litre reserved pork broth, strained (4 cups)
- 60 g masa harina (1/2 cup), or 50 g plain flour
- 2 tbsp lard or oil
- 1 x'catic or güero chile, charred and left whole (optional)
- 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
- Salt, to taste
For the chiltomate
- 600 g ripe tomatoes
- 1/2 white onion, in one piece
- 1 habanero
- 1 tbsp lard or oil
- Salt, to taste
To serve
- 18 corn tortillas, hot
Step by step
9 stepsSimmer the pork
Put the pork, onion, unpeeled garlic and salt in a pot with the water. Bring to a boil, skim the grey foam, then simmer uncovered for about 50 minutes, until a piece pulls apart easily under a fork. Lift out the meat and let it cool enough to handle. Strain the broth and keep it, you need a litre for the kol and it is the whole flavour of the sauce. Chop the pork finely by hand, roughly the size of coarse mince.
Grind the recado
Toast the peppercorns, cloves, cumin and cinnamon in a dry pan over medium heat for a minute, until they smell warm, then grind to a powder with the oregano in a spice grinder or molcajete. Mash in the garlic, vinegar and salt to make a stiff dark paste. It should be thick enough to hold a shape on the spoon. If you have bought recado blanco, loosen a heaped tablespoon with the vinegar instead.
Hollow the cheese
Peel off the wax and any cloth. Slice a lid off the top, about a third of the way down, and set it aside. With a sturdy spoon, scoop out the inside, leaving walls and a base about 1 cm thick all round. Hold it up to the light if unsure, thin spots show. Grate about 100 g of the scooped cheese to stir into the filling and keep the rest for another use. If the cheese is very hard and very salty, sit the shell and lid in cold water for 20 minutes, then drain upside down.
Fry the picadillo
Heat the lard in a wide pan and cook the onion and garlic over medium heat until soft and just golden, about 8 minutes. Add the recado paste and fry for a minute, then the tomatoes and the whole chile. Cook 10 to 12 minutes, until the tomato has broken down and the mixture no longer looks watery. Stir in the pork, raisins, olives, capers and almonds and cook another 10 minutes, until it is thick enough to hold a furrow when you drag a spoon through it. Off the heat, fold in the chopped egg, the vinegar and the grated cheese. Taste now and salt only if it needs it. Let it cool to warm.
Fill and wrap
Pass the banana leaf over a flame or a hot dry pan for a few seconds on each side until it turns glossy and flexible. Pack the picadillo into the cheese shell, pressing it in firmly and mounding it slightly, then set the lid back on top. Sit the ball on the leaf or muslin, bring the edges up over the top and tie with string so the whole thing is snug. The wrapping is what stops the cheese spreading as it softens.
Steam it
Set the parcel on a rack in a deep pot above a few centimetres of simmering water, cover, and steam over low heat for 35 to 45 minutes. It is ready when the cheese gives under light pressure and has sagged a little but still stands. An oven works too: 170C for 30 to 35 minutes. Do not push it further, overheated Edam splits and oils out. Rest it, still wrapped, for 10 minutes before opening.
Make the kol
Whisk the masa harina into 250 ml of the cold broth until smooth with no lumps. Heat the lard in a saucepan, pour in the remaining broth and the charred chile, bring to a simmer, then add the masa mixture in a steady stream while whisking. Cook 8 to 10 minutes on low, stirring often, until it coats the back of a spoon like thin cream. Season with pepper and salt. If it stiffens too much, let it down with more broth or water, it should pour, not sit.
Roast the chiltomate
Char the whole tomatoes, the onion piece and the habanero in a dry comal or heavy pan over high heat, turning, until blistered and blackened in patches and soft, about 10 minutes. Peel the worst of the tomato skin away if you like, then mash everything in a molcajete or pulse briefly in a blender, keeping it coarse. Fry the purée in the lard for 5 minutes and salt it. Leave the habanero whole in the sauce if you want the perfume without the full heat.
Serve
Unwrap the cheese onto a warm deep plate and cut it into wedges at the table, or lift portions out with a large spoon so each one gets shell and filling. Ladle kol over the top so it pools at the base, then add a spoonful of chiltomate to the side of each portion rather than over it. Hot tortillas go round with it.
Notes from the kitchen
- Outside Mexico, a whole young Edam or Gouda ball from a cheese counter works. Ask for one that has not been vacuum packed in slices, and if only a half ball is available, hollow it, fill it and bake it cut side up in a dish.
- Without banana leaf, double muslin or cheesecloth tied with string does the same job. Foil will work for oven cooking but keep a layer of baking paper against the cheese.
- Both sauces and the picadillo can be made a day ahead and kept in the fridge. Fill and steam the cheese on the day, and bring the picadillo back to room temperature first so the centre heats through.
- Leftovers reheat badly as a whole ball but very well chopped up: fry the cheese and filling together in a pan and eat it in tacos with the chiltomate.
This is the standard Yucatecan household version, the one built around a bought ball of queso de bola and recado blanco, written at quantities for one 1.8 kg cheese.
This photograph was generated with artificial intelligence and may differ from the finished dish.