In my first year out of college, my good friend Edhy and her family who hail from Venezuela introduced me to the magical world of arepa. Arepas are quite possibly Central/Latin America’s finest solution to the fast food conundrum: a thick corn tortilla, sliced open and stuffed with cheesy goodness. They’re similar to pupusas and gorditas, in that they’re flat and stuffed, but the similarities end there.

Sorry, I just couldn't wait long enough to take pictures.

Pupusas and gorditas are typically made from the commonly available Maseca brand masa harina (in the US, at least): decent for making tortillas for wrapping tacos, etc., but something is lacking when it’s the focus of the meal. It’s the Pan – the brand of cornmeal used to make the arepa that makes them the golden standard of stuffed masa snacks.

In most of the nation, arepas are difficult to come by, but in Miami, I found arepas all over – at Don Pan, at the corner bodega, and even in the freezer section at Publix. I found them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, stuffed with scrambled eggs, beans, bbq pork, roast pork, sweet corn… while there are some traditional recipes, it seems that when it comes to arepas, you might be able to make anything work, so long as you have the right masa.

Random Facts:

Pan doesn’t undergo nixtamalization, the process used to produce most masa harina. To make most masa, corn kernels are cooked and soaked in an alkaline solution (like limewater). This helps to loosen the hull from the kernel and breaks down the bits of cell walls that we can’t digest to make the nutrients in the corn more available. The hull is discarded, and only the germ (the meat of the kernel) is used to produce masa. This is typically a good thing, since it increases the levels of niacin, calcium, iron, copper and zinc that our bodies can use, as well as killing off some of the bacteria and fungi that might be hanging out as well. However, those chemical reactions also change the kinds of proteins in the masa, and get rid of the hull too – changing the taste and texture of the masa.

Sadly, though, San Francisco is a largely arepa-less city: the sole vendor I’ve discovered in these parts is a tiny place called “Mr Pollo,” just south of the 24th St. BART station in the Mission. And while the arepas made on that greasy grill behind the counter are cheap and delicious, they only have arepas con queso… and their hours tend to be fairly unpredicatble.

So imagine my glee when on my first visit to the brand new Duc Loi Supermarket at 18th and Mission, I finally tracked down some Pan (aka P.A.N. Harina de Maiz), the flour by which Edhy’s mom swore when making her arepas. In the aisles of the I jumped up and down, then squealed and did a little giggly dance, much to the amusement of the friends with whom I was shopping for fixin’s for that afternoon’s tamale-making party.

So, after a fairly steady tamale diet of for the next several days, I was kind of masa-ed out… but when I rolled past the cheese selection at La Palma Mexi-catessen I knew that the time for my arepas had come, so I picked up a small 12-ouncer of some melty Oaxacan mozzarella and headed home.

Note that this was my first attempt at arepa-making, and more are certainly to follow – same arepa-making time, same arepa-making channel.

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