Pantry · Herbs

Guascas

The dried herb a Colombian chicken-and-potato soup is unfinished without: green, grassy, and local.

Galinsoga parviflora — the dried herb that makes ajiaco taste like Bogotá · Also called galinsoga, potato weed, guasca · From The Andes, especially the Sabana de Bogotá

Dried guascas leaves in a small paper bag and bowl on a wooden table.

The journey

Guascas is a common weed that Andean kitchens turned into a signature. Ajiaco, the Bogotá soup of three potatoes, chicken, and corn, tastes wrong without it. The dried leaves smell like hay and artichoke.

Two recipes in the Colombian volume name it. That is enough. No other cuisine in the series uses this plant. It is a national herb the way ají amarillo is a national chile.

Public-domain botanical plate of epazote — another New World kitchen herb, standing beside guascas. — Francisco Manuel Blanco, Flora de Filipinas (1880–1883) · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Add the dried herb toward the end of ajiaco so it stays fragrant. A little cream and capers on the table are the rest of the ritual.

There is no honest substitute. Parsley plus a bay leaf is a different soup. Buy the small bags labeled guascas if you want Bogotá in the pot.

Healers and the table

Andean home kitchens treated the herb as food in a restorative chicken soup. The comfort is the broth and the table.

Guascas in ajiaco is supper. It is not a treatment.

Traditional uses are part of the story of this spice. They are not medical advice.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens

Find Guascas on Amazon