Cazuela

A wide clay or earthenware dish: rice, beans, and stews that come to the table still bubbling.

Also called earthenware cazuela, casserole · From Spain and the kitchens that kept the word

A wide earthenware cazuela of baked rice, a wooden spoon, and a linen napkin.

The journey

Cazuela names the dish and the vessel. In Spain it is the earthenware you slide into the oven or set on a gentle flame. Mexican kitchens kept the word for beans, rice, and anything that should arrive at the table in the pot it cooked in. Argentine pages use it when a stew wants clay more than iron.

The books name a cazuela more than a hundred times. That is not a casserole brand. It is a shape: wide, low, and honest enough to serve from.

A Codex Mendoza folio of Mexica life — the world in which a clay cooking dish was already ordinary furniture. — Codex Mendoza (c. 1541), Bodleian Library, Oxford · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Oil a new clay cazuela and heat it slowly the first time. Build the dish in the pot. Carry the pot to the table. The crust at the edge is the prize.

The Mexican, Spanish, and Argentine volumes all assume this vessel. A ceramic baking dish is the weekday stand-in.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens

Find a cazuela on Amazon