🇨🇴 Colombia · Bogota and the Cundiboyacense highlands
ChanguaColombian milk and egg soup
A Colombian breakfast soup of the Andean highlands: equal parts milk and water heated with scallion and cilantro, with eggs poached in it, and served with bread (often toasted or stale, called calado).
Origin and history
Changua is a hot milk-and-egg broth eaten at breakfast on the Cundiboyacense high plateau around Bogotá. Colombia.com says its first versions were water, milk, eggs, onion and cilantro, without calado or cheese, and traces it to the Chibcha communities of the plateau, a claim given as tradition rather than documented history; it cites the writer Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda for a Chibcha origin of the name too. The Spanish Royal Academy's definition, adopted in 2000, calls changua a broth made with onion, milk, cilantro and salt.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 4 servings
- Total time
- 25 min
- Hands-on
- 10 min
Ingredients
- 500 ml2 cups water
- 500 ml2 cups whole milk, equal parts with the water
- 1 stalk scallion (cebolla larga), white and green parts, finely chopped
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped (optional)
- 1 tbsp butter
- fresh cilantro, chopped, to taste
- salt, to taste
- 4 eggs
- 4 slices bread, toasted or stale (calado), to put in or beside the bowl
Method
-
1. Put the water, milk, scallion, garlic and cilantro in a pot over medium heat and add the butter and salt.
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2. Heat until it begins to bubble gently; a hard boil is not needed.
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3. Lower the heat and slip the eggs in one at a time, so that the yolks do not break.
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4. Let them poach without stirring much, a few minutes, until the whites are set and the yolks are cooked as you like.
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5. Taste and adjust the salt. Serve very hot, one egg per bowl with plenty of the broth, with the toasted bread in the soup or on the side.
Notes
- Equal parts milk and water keep the soup neither too heavy nor too thin, according to Directo al Paladar, whose version uses 500 ml of each, 2 eggs and 30 g of butter for one large bowl. The proportions here (4 eggs for 2 cups of each) follow the colombia.com recipe, which is labelled as the Cúcuta form of changua.
- Gentle heat is enough: add the eggs once the liquid is hot and let them poach without much stirring, so the yolks stay whole.
- Bread: toasted bread, stale bread (calado) or baguette pieces go in the soup or beside it; Directo al Paladar also mentions arepas and fresh cheese on the side, though the earliest versions are said to have had no calado or cheese. It is typically drunk with hot chocolate or café con leche.
- Each family has its own 'secret' ingredient, so the flavour varies by region.
- Make-ahead is not recommended: the broth is made and eaten at once.
Adapted from Colombia.com, Changua (recetas colombianas) and Directo al Paladar, Changua: la sopa de leche y huevo que se desayuna en Colombia.
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