Latin American cuisine

Latin American cuisine is the typical foods, beverages, and cooking styles common to many of the countries and cultures in Latin America. Latin America is a highly racially, ethnically, and geographically diverse with varying cuisines. Some items typical of Latin American cuisine include maize-based dishes arepas, empanadas, pupusas, tacos, tamales, tortillas and various salsas and other condiments (guacamole, pico de gallo, mole, chimichurri, chili, aji, pebre). Sofrito, a culinary term that originally referred to a specific combination of sautéed or braised aromatics, exists in Latin American cuisine. It refers to a sauce of tomatoes, roasted bell peppers, garlic, onions and herbs. Rice, corn, pasta, bread, plantain, potato, yucca, and beans are also staples in Latin American cuisine.

Latin American beverages are just as distinct as their foods. Some of the beverages predate colonization. Some popular beverages include coffee, mate, guayusa, hibiscus tea, horchata, chicha, atole, cacao and aguas frescas.

Latin American desserts are as rich and diverse as the region’s culinary heritage. They often feature tropical fruits, creamy textures, and the sweetness of ingredients like sugar, condensed milk, and caramel. Many desserts reflect a blend of Indigenous, European, and African influences. They include dulce de leche, alfajor, rice pudding, tres leches cake, teja, beijinho, flan, and churros.

There are many different kinds of traditions associated with eating in Latin America. There are a variety of special days where certain foods are consumed, as well as many holidays that are celebrated in Latin America.

There are many forms of gratitude that inhabitants of Latin America employ when they discard excess food. Some people kiss the bread while others cut it before discarding it. Other such traditions are upheld largely by the country, Argentina and Uruguay have one such tradition known as a "es:Ñoquis del 29" or "the Gnocchi 29", where on the 29th of each month a family eats gnocchi, sometimes placing money under their plate to wish for abundance in the next month.

There is a holiday celebrated in Latin America known as Three Kings Day (otherwise known as Epiphany) which is celebrated on January 6 of each year where families feast in honor of God's manifestation in human form in Jesus.

In many countries of Latin America families consume lentils on the first day of the New Year because they are thought to bring prosperity.

Information about Amerindian cuisine comes from a great variety of sources. Modern-day Native peoples retain a rich body of traditional foods, some of which have become iconic of present-day Native social gatherings (for example, frybread)^{[citation needed]}. Foods like cornbread are known to have been adopted into the cuisine of the United States from Native American groups. In other cases, documents from the early periods of contact with European, African, and Asian peoples allow the recovery of food practices which passed out of popularity in the historic period (for example, black drink). Archaeological techniques, particularly in the subdisciplines of zooarchaeology and paleoethnobotany, have allowed for the understanding of other culinary practices or preferred foods which did not survive into the written historic record. The main crops Indigenous Amerindians used in Mexico and Central America were corn and beans, which are used in contemporary dishes such as pupusas, tamales, pozole, chuchitos, and corn tortillas. The main Indigenous Amerindian crops used by Natives of South America were potatoes, corn and chuño, used mainly in modern-day Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Chilean, Bolivian and Paraguayan dishes such as arepas, papa a la huancaína, humitas, chipa guasu, locro and many more.