cocido — Spain

Cocido is a slow-simmered pot of chickpeas, meats, and vegetables cooked together in a large amount of water, eaten as a main course across Spain and, under the name cozido, in Portugal, Brazil, and other Portuguese-speaking countries. The dish belongs to a wider family of legume-and-meat stews found throughout the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America, each carrying its own combination of ingredients. In Spain, the Madrid version — cocido madrileño — is the one most often described in cookbooks, built around chickpeas, beef shin, chicken, chorizo, morcilla, and bacon, simmered with cabbage, carrots, and potatoes. Similar stews are cooked under related names in other Spanish regions, such as cocido montañés in Cantabria or cocido maragato in León, each substituting or adding local produce. The chickpeas are soaked overnight, then simmered gently for several hours with the meats and aromatics; vegetables are usually added partway through so they do not overcook. Rather than being ladled out all at once, the pot is often served in stages: the strained broth first, thickened with fine noodles as a soup, followed by the chickpeas and vegetables, and finally the meats, sliced and arranged on a platter. The order and number of courses vary by household and region, and so does the choice of sausage or cut of meat; some cooks add a ham bone or pig's trotter for extra richness, while others keep the pot lighter with fewer cuts of meat.