SpainSpanishHistoryArt & ArchitectureMarch 21, 2017 | 5 min read
Spanish cuisine is one of the most effective entry points into the country’s culture, history, and regional identity. For Spanish teachers, food is a classroom topic that travels. Before your students order their first tapas, here are the ten dishes that tell the story of Spain best.
Spanish food is one of the most memorable parts of any student trip to Spain.
Dishes that connect directly to the regions students are learning about.
Jamón is Spain’s most celebrated product, a dry-cured ham produced from pigs raised in the oak forests of Andalusia and Extremadura. The finest variety, Jamón Ibérico de Bellota, comes from black Iberian pigs that roam freely and feed on acorns (bellotas).
Gives the meat its distinctive flavour. You will find legs of jamón hanging in almost every bar and restaurant in the country. For students of Spanish, it is also an immediate vocabulary lesson in regional agriculture and food culture.
Manchego is a sheep’s milk cheese produced in the La Mancha region, the same region made famous by Cervantes in Don Quixote. Made from the milk of the Manchega breed of sheep and aged between two months and two years, it has a firm texture and a slightly nutty flavour. Served alongside jamón and a glass of local wine, it is the standard Spanish appetiser and one that connects directly to the geography and literature students encounter in the classroom.
Spanish chorizo is a cured pork sausage seasoned with smoked paprika (pimentón).
Gives it a deep red colour and a smoky, slightly spicy flavour. Unlike Mexican chorizo, the Spanish variety is cured and can be eaten uncooked as part of a tapas spread, or cooked into stews and rice dishes. It is one of the foundational ingredients of Spanish cooking and appears in regional variations from Galicia to Catalonia. Students who visit Spain on a Prométour Spain: Classic Tour will encounter it at nearly every meal.
Paella originated in the Valencia region and is built around short-grain rice cooked in a wide, shallow pan over an open flame. The original Valencian version contains chicken, rabbit, green beans, and saffron. Coastal variations use seafood: mussels, prawns, and squid. The dish is cooked slowly until the bottom layer of rice forms a caramelised crust called the socarrat.
Most Spaniards consider the best part. For students, paella is a geography lesson: the dish changes significantly depending on which part of Spain you are in, and understanding why is a direct window into Spanish regional identity.
The Spanish omelette, made with eggs, potato, and onion cooked slowly in olive oil, is one of Spain’s most democratic dishes: eaten at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, served warm or at room temperature, found in every bar from Madrid to Málaga. Its simplicity is deceptive. A well-made tortilla española requires patience and technique, and every cook has an opinion on the correct level of doneness. Students who try to make one in a cooking class discover quickly that the flip is harder than it looks.
Gazpacho is a cold tomato-based soup from Andalusia, made with ripe tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, garlic, olive oil, and sherry vinegar, blended smooth and served chilled. It is a practical dish born from the heat of the southern Spanish summer and the ingredients most readily available to Andalusian farm workers. For students visiting Spain in spring or summer, it is one of the first things they will encounter on a menu, and one of the most immediately surprising: cold soup is not an intuitive concept for most North American teenagers. Our Spain: Art and Architecture Tour spends time in Andalusia, where gazpacho is at its best.
Crispy fried potatoes served with a spicy tomato sauce, sometimes accompanied by alioli, patatas bravas are the classic Spanish bar snack and one of the most ordered tapas dishes in the country. Simple in concept but endlessly variable in execution: the sauce recipe changes from bar to bar, and the debate over which version is best is a reliable topic of conversation in any Spanish household. For students, they are universally and immediately liked, and they open the door to a conversation about how tapas culture works and why eating this way is different from ordering a main course.
Croquetas are small, breaded and fried cylinders filled with a thick béchamel-based mixture, most commonly jamón.
Also salt cod, mushroom, or chicken. The béchamel is cooked slowly until it is dense enough to hold its shape, then chilled, formed, breadcrumbed, and fried. The result is a crispy shell giving way to an intensely flavoured, creamy interior. They represent a good entry point for students who are cautious about trying unfamiliar food: croquetas are recognisable in form even when the filling is new.
Crema Catalana is Catalonia’s version of a custard dessert, similar to French crème brûlée but made with milk rather than cream, flavoured with cinnamon and citrus zest, and finished with a caramelised sugar crust. It predates the French version by at least a century and is fiercely claimed by Catalans as their own. For students studying Catalan identity and the relationship between Catalonia and the rest of Spain, the crema catalana versus crème brûlée debate is a useful and surprisingly lively entry point. Our Spain: Catalonia Cultural Tour explores Barcelona and the broader Catalan region.
This dessert is a daily staple.
Churros are fried dough pastries, long, ridged, and dusted with sugar, served with a cup of thick, dark drinking chocolate for dipping. In Spain, they are a breakfast and late-night snack, consumed in churrerías after long evenings and early mornings alike. The combination of light dough and intensely thick chocolate is unlike anything most North American students have encountered under the same name, and it is typically one of the most talked-about food memories students bring back from a trip to Spain.
If your students are going to Spain, they should arrive knowing what they are about to eat and why it matters. Prométour builds fully private, custom school group tours to Spain designed around your Spanish or history curriculum. Browse the Spain: Art and Architecture Tour, Spain: Catalonia Cultural Tour, or Spain: Classic Tour to see what a fully customised itinerary could look like for your group.
