Dinner at Ixiim Cooking School

Ixiim Cooking School: Learn to Cook in San Pedro!

In Activities, Food & Drink, Guatemala by Sheena30 Comments

Experience the true taste of Maya cooking with Ixiim Cooking School where traditional methods are mixed-in with fun & learning to create one of the most delicious experiences in Guatemala!

There are a lot of things to see & do in San Pedro such as:

But after reading amazing reviews on Tripadvisor, the one thing we didn’t want to miss was taking a cooking class with Ixiim Cooking School!

Learning to cook at Ixiim

Putting our serious faces on for the cooking class! We had lots of fun & laughs too!

Ixiim Cooking School is run by two young women, Angela from Spain & Li from San Pedro.

Angela fell in love with San Pedro when she was passing through a few months ago – it is one of the best places to visit in Guatemala.

She met Li & they became fast friends through their mutual love of Guatemalan food – from there, Ixiim Cooking School was born!

Ixiim Cooking School is located on the main traveller’s strip, alongside restaurants, cafes & Spanish schools. With its bright yellow gates, it stands out from the crowd!

Ixiim Cooking School gates

Step inside Ixiim Cooking School!

Stepping into Ixiim Cooking School is a breathe of fresh air. It’s set in a beautiful, green oasis surrounded by trees & plants.

We here at DIY Travel HQ haven’t seen many gardens in Guatemala so this was a real treat & I have to admit I felt a little homesick – my mum has a beautiful backyard with a vegetable garden just like this πŸ™‚

Angela showed us around the kitchen & explained the 6 dishes we would be cooking:

  • Pepian chicken
  • Handmade tortillas
  • Rellenitos de Platano
  • Beetroot salad
  • Yellow rice
  • Rosa de Jamaica
Handmade fire stove at Ixiim

The traditional fire-stove at Ixiim Cooking School was handmade

It sounded so good!

The prep station had already been set up for us. Ixiim Cooking School has only been open for 3 months so the walls are freshly painted and the crockery & equipment all looked really clean & new.

Angela also took us on a short tour of the garden. It’s a work in progress but plots have already been cleared to grow lots of different types of herbs & vegetable. I love that idea, there’s nothing better than being able to go into your own garden to pick out what you need for your cooking.

Oh & there’s already a chicken coop set-up & ready to go!

We caught a glimpse of where we would be having dinner after the class too.Β The rustic wooden table was laid with a beautiful patterned tablecloth and pottery bowls & cups to eat & drink from. With all the flowers & plants surrounding it, it looked so pretty!

Dinner table in Ixiim garden

The dinner table was set in the garden – so pretty!

Back in the kitchen, it was time to put on our aprons & start cooking! We were the only people taking the class so that made it feel extra-special.

A young Guatemalan woman named Shenni introduced herself as our teacher for the class – we have almost the same name so I immediately loved her πŸ™‚

Shenni is from an Indigenous Mayan family, living in San Pedro La Laguna. She was wearing a traditional red & pink multi-striped huipil, pronounced β€œwee-pee”. A huipil is a woven blouse that is typically worn in the Guatemalan highlands, such as the town of Todos Santos.

Many towns and villages have their own distinct style but in San Pedro, the women wear what they like. Also, huipils are traditionally made with fabric woven on a backstrap loom… but that’s for a different class altogether!

Shenni from Ixiim Cooking School

Our teacher & masterchef Shenni!

Now back to the cooking class…

The class was run in Spanish but Shenni spoke very clearly & slowly soΒ weΒ understood most of what she was saying, even though ourΒ Spanish is quite basic.

There was also a volunteer with us the whole time, the amazing Paola, who translated anything we didn’t understand. Angela was also often in the background to answer any questions or make clarifications.

All the ingredients we would be using were laid out for us – it was amazing that we would be making 6 dishes mainly using only these ingredients!

Ingredients for Ixiim cooking class

Most of the ingredients we would be using, except for the vegetables

We talked about the recipes in general & how we would be cooking them. Shenni explained that we would be preparing one dish at a time but then cooking some of them at the same time.

Then we made our way to the chopping boards & started cutting up some vegetables: carrots, onions, beetroot, potatoes & guisquil (similar to a zucchini).

After we finished slicing & dicing, we put the vegetables aside & turned our attention to the main dish, Pepian Chicken.

Pepian Chicken on the stove

Mmm Pepian Chicken on the boil!

Contents

Pepian Chicken

Pepian Chicken is one of the oldest dishes in Guatemala’s culitary heritage. Like many traditional meals, it has pre-hispanic origins & was served during religious Mayan ceremonies.

Pepian Chicken also represents a fusion of Spanish & Mayan cuisine, a cross between a Guatemalan stew (recardo) & a Mayan curry.

Pepian Chicken’s distinctive flavour comes from a rich sauce made from ground seeds & spices: black & red chillies (called guaque & pasa), raw pumpkin seeds, black peppercorns, sesame seeds & a cinnamon stick.

Spices for Pepian Chicken

The seeds, spices & chillies for the Pepian Chicken

We watched Shenni roast the chillies, sesame & pumpkin seeds. The tomatoes were also roasted, then everything was mixed together in a blender.

Tomatillos were also added which are, as its name suggests, tiny tomatoes – they’re also known as the Mexican husk tomato. Tomatillos are native to Central America and were cultivated in the pre-Columbian era.

The seeds, spices & tomatoes were blended for around 1-2 minutes, which created a really rich & fragrant sauce. This was added to a pot on the stove, which was already boiling with chicken and the potatoes & guisquil which we chopped up earlier.

Stirring Pepian Chicken

Shenni mixing the blended sauce into the stew of chicken, potatoes & carrots

Handmade Tortillas

Leaving the Pepian Chicken to boil, we started working on making our own very own tortillas!

Corn is absolutely fundamental to Guatemalan culture & Ixiim Cooking School pays tribute to it in many ways.

The name Ixiim means corn in the MayanΒ language, the yellow walls symbolize the colour of corn & the Mayan god of corn is the Ixiim Cooking School logo.

Check out our video for more on Ixiim Cooking School!

Legend has it that when the Mayan gods decided to create man, they tried different materials like wood & clay but nothing worked. Then they tested corn & it was successful – so it goes that the Mayans are β€œmen of corn”, not only in mythology but also very much in reality.

Quite simply, a meal in Guatemala is not a meal without tortillas – and here, they are, of course, made with corn!

Tortillas are eaten with almost everything and they are can also be used to replace a fork & spoon.

Teacher with fresh tortillas

Corn is life in Guatemala

At our class with Ixiim Cooking School, we learnt to make tortillas the traditional way. The corn was already husked and the kernels were already boiled but we got to use the grinding machine.

We put the cooked kernels into the machine, grinded it by hand and then the dough flour (masa harina) came out at the bottom.

We repeated the process a few times to make enough tortillas for the two of us.

Corn grinder at Ixiim

Grinding the corn kernels by hand to make corn flour

Then we went over to the weaved mats on the floor. Here, we used a traditional stone grinder called piedra de mole, which has been in (the co-owner) Li’s family for generations.

We used a stone rolling pin on the stone grinder, rolling it back & forth, to further grind the flour mixture into a dough.

I wasn’t very good at this but Erik did a little better!

He was eventually able to roll the dough into a few small balls.

Erik using traditional stone grinder

Erik was great at rolling the dough on the traditional stone grinder!

Then we went back to the table & started shaping the dough into palm-sized patties.

Finally, I got to fulfill my Guatemalan dream of slapping my hands together to make tortillas!

You hear this sound of applause all over the country, as women make tortillas in shops & on the streets all day long. Now was my chance to do the very same thing & congratulate myself on a job well done… clap clap clap! πŸ™‚

The tortillas should be flat, thin & round. After we ran out of dough & there was no more reason to clap our hands, we put the tortillas onto the top of the comal.

A comal is a traditional stove with a sheet of heavy steel instead of a grill. It is heated with firewood (lena) which gives the tortillas a slight smoky flavor.

Coral traditional stove

Placing the tortillas on the traditional stove or “comal”

We let the tortillas cook for awhile, turning them back & forth, until they was golden-brown & even slightly burnt in parts.

The beauty of Guatemalan tortillas is that, because they are home made, no tortilla is the same. When they are cooked using traditional methods, the taste is very different to those made my machine.

We couldn’t wait to taste them!

Smoky tortillas on stove

Delicious smokey tortillas on the fire-stove!

Rellenitos de Platano

Our next dish to conquer was Rellenitos de Platano.

Rellenitos are a sweet dish of mashed plantains filled with a mixture of refried beans, melted chocolate & cinnamon.

First, we cut the bananas in half & put them in to a saucepan to boil. After they cooled down, we mashed the plantains into a thick paste – that was fun!

Rellenitos de Platano ingredients

The ingredients for Rellenitos de Platano

Then we rolled the paste into little balls in our hands, before shaping them into small tortillas. We made a small indentation into the paste to add the stuffing.

Finally, we folded the Rellenitos over a few times, to resemble short, fat bananas, before putting them into a saucepan to deep-fry.

Making Rellinitos at Ixiim

Making Rellinitos with Paola & Shenni

Rosa de Jamaica

I was hoping to have drinks included in the cooking class but I didn’t expect to be making our own! Rosa de Jamaica (or Jamaica Juice) happens to be one of my favourite drinks too, so I was excited to learn how to make it!

It’s a simple recipe, using dried hibiscus flowers, cloves, cinnamon, water & sugar.

You can drink Rosa de Jamaica hot or cold. It has a slight tart but refreshing taste, similar to cranberry juice. I love it!

Finished food from cooking class

The big jug of Rosa de Jamaica went perfectly with the meal!

The Finished MealΒ at Ixiim Cooking School

The cooking class took approximately 2.5 hours.

Along with Pepian Chicken, handmade tortillas, Rellenitos de Plantano & Rosa de Jamaica, we also made yellow rice & a beetroot salad.

The dishes were brought out to the lovely table setting in the garden. There was so much food & it looked amazing! I couldn’t believe we made all of it ourselves!

And the presentation was superb – the pottery bowls & cups really enhanced the food & the atmosphere.

Pottery bowls & cups

The pottery bowls & cups were lovely to eat from

It was around 6:30 pm at this time & it was the perfect time to sit down for dinner. The sun was going down & the fairy lights were turning on.

The sky takes on this beautiful blue tinge & the garden begins to shimmer in the light. It’s my favorite time of the day.

The food looked almost too nice to eat but we had worked up an appetite! We were ready to taste our cooking!Β 

Time to eat at Ixiim

Provecho!

We started with the Pepian Chicken, the aroma was too good to resist. We had ordered it in restaurants before but this tasted a lot different. The flavours were much stronger, we could pick-out all of the seasonings, because we knew exactly what went into it.

We had the Pepian Chicken as a sauce with rice but you can also have it separately as a soup.

Either way, you must have it with tortillas! I really savoured the tortillas because of all the work that went into it.

They also tasted different from usual – cooking them on the traditional fire-stove really brought out the smokiness, they were delicious.

Handmade corn tortillas

Our handmade tortillas were delicious with the Pepian Chicken

Beetroot is not common in Guatemalan cooking but the salad we made was so good! It’s often the simplest dishes that are the tastiest.

At this stage we were pretty full but there’s always room for dessert! The Rellenitos de Platanos with the bean & chocolate filling tasted warm, soft, sweet & rich. It was the perfect dish to end on.

Dessert Rellenitos at Ixiim

The Rellenitos de Platanos were a delicious dessert!

There was a lot of food, more than enough for 4 people but we ate it all between the 2 of us!

In 6 weeks travelling around Guatemala, the food we made at Ixiim Cooking School was the heartiest & most delicious meal we’ve had!

Dinner spread at Ixiim

Our best meal in Guatemala – I can’t believe we made it ourselves!

Ixiim Cooking School Wrap-Up

Our experience at Ixiim Cooking School was everything we were looking for in a cooking class in San Pedro La Laguna.

We learnt how to make Guatemala food, using traditional methods in a beautiful outdoor kitchen. To top it off, we enjoyed our meal in a beautiful garden with fairy lights, as the sun was going down.

We often have long days travelling or working, and usually just have quick & easy meals.

So we felt spoilt & relaxed in this romantic setting, it was so nice to be able to spend quality time together over a lovely meal.

Finishing our meal

Finishing our meal with nightfall

Angela was a very friendly & professional host. She really made us feel welcome in her home & epitomizes the phrase β€œMi Casa es Su Casa”.

Shenni was an incredibly helpful & patient teacher. We never felt rushed & when we were unsure about what to do, she always worked with us until we got it right.

If you’re looking to have fun, learn new skills in the kitchen & gain a better understanding of Mayan culture, sign up for a class with Ixiim Cooking School – it will probably be one of your best things to do in Guatemala!

Friends at Ixiim Cooking School

We love Ixiim Cooking School!

Know Before You Go

Location: Ixiim Cooking School – San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala

Cooking Class Times: 11:00 am & 4:00 pm, Monday to Saturday

Duration: 3 hours including meal time

Dishes: Pepian Chicken, handmade Tortillas, Rellenitos de Platono, Yellow Rice, Beetroot Salad & Rosa de Jamaica

Price: Q280 or $35

Contact:

  • Phone:Β  Β +502 4282-5593
  • Email: Β  Β [email protected]
  • Web: Β  Β  Β ixiimcookingschool.com
Ixiim Cooking School sign

Sign up today for the best cooking class in San Pedro!

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Experience the true taste of Mayan cooking with Ixiim Cooking School in San Pedro La Laguna, where traditional methods are mixed-in with fun & learning to create one of the most delicious experiences in Guatemala!

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Thank you to Ixiim Cooking School for hosting us & giving us the opportunity to experience true Guatemalan cuisine & hospitality.Β 

Visited in August 2016

Comments

  1. Wow! I got hungry reading this article of yours. You gave me an idea of incorporating cooking and learning new dishes with traveling. Hoping to attend a similar class soon. Nice read and great pics!

  2. That is so awesome! I didn’t know you could do something like that. I want to go to Guatemala!

  3. What a great article. When I finally get to Guatemala I will definitely check out this cookery class. And I love the garden where you sit and enjoy your meal

  4. Wow! What an experience! I can’t believe you had to go through so many steps to make the tortillas. I’ll bet they tasted great. Fantastic photos, by the way!

  5. I love the post. I like cooking and sampling local food is always high on my agenda. Lovely knowing about Ixiim Cooking School.

    1. Author

      Thanks Parnashree, trying local food is one my favourite parts of travelling too. I definitely recommend Ixiim Cooking School if you ever visit Guatemala & San Pedro La Laguna πŸ™‚

  6. Really interesting, made me really hungry ? When travelling we always like to enjoy the local food, its a nice way to integrate better with locals. Great post!

  7. A lot of work but it really paid off in the end. I’ve only taken one cooking class while traveling and it was fun. Your post makes me want to start looking into cooking classes on my next trip.

  8. Oh my God these pictures are so appealing that I can visualize the quality time you spent there. Though I’m not much into cooking but I would like to have dinner on that beautifully organised rustic wooden table with all those pottery bowls and cups. love it!!

  9. I love travel plans which come with some activities. Learning how to cook local cuisine is one of them! Nice that you wrote about it! High time I should also pen down my experiences in my blog.

    1. Author

      I agree Abhinav, sometimes when you’re travelling for a long time, you can fall into a routine quickly so it’s nice to mix things up with some different experiences & activities. Good luck with your blog!

  10. Wow! I love taking local cooking classes when I travel and this one looks awesome. I loved Guatemala when I visited – desperate to go back for longer and explore more! I love pepian chicken too, so cool that you got to make that πŸ™‚

  11. Wow, that sure looks like a great cooking course. Incredible that you made those dishes from those few ingredients. Love your photos, too! It’s like I was looking over your shoulder.

  12. Wow… those food and that too in a natural setting using traditional equipment!

  13. Mayan culture is very fascinating and cooking is a great mirror of any culture. All the rich heritage and culture of the Mayan civilization is evident in its cooking too.

    1. Author

      You’re absolutely correct Vyjay, we learnt a lot about Guatemalan culture & traditions while we were cooking. I really enjoyed that aspect of it – it was an experience that was fun & educational.

  14. This is amazing! I always wanted to do a cooking class while traveling. This looks like a real gem and I would love to learn to cook some of the local dishes if I ever make it down to San Pedro.

    1. Author

      Thanks Maria! I hadn’t done many cooking classes before either but this was such an awesome experience that I plan to take one in every new country from now on πŸ™‚

  15. Wow! Your are such a great storyteller and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about your experiences participating in this cooking class. I actually felt like I was there with you and your description of the foods you ate were making my mouth water!

    I am heading to San Pedro in November for a few days and am always looking for unique and fun experiences to add to my itinerary and I definitely think that I will be adding this one. It sounds like a really amazing experience!

    Thanks so much for sharing your photos and stories!

    1. Author

      Thanks for the kind words, we appreciate it so much! We definitely recommend taking a class with Ixiim Cooking School – San Pedro is also a great base for hikes to Indian Nose & San Pedro volcano, observing a religious San Simon ceremony in Santiago and trips to the surrounding villages such as San Marcos & San Juan. We have posts on most of our experiences in Guatemala, let us know if we can help with your travel plans… have a wonderful trip in November! πŸ™‚

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