Tapado {Instant Pot or Stove Top}

Tropical flavors abound in this easy and healthyish Tapado recipe! This Guatemalan seafood soup with coconut milk is replete with fresh fish and shrimp, plantains, and sweet potatoes… all in a savory and delicious coconut broth! Make it on your stove top, or speed up the process using your Instant Pot.

👩🏻‍🍳 Tamara Talks – Recipe Inspiration

In these waning, gloomy days of winter (near the Gulf coast), I find myself craving tropical flavors. It’s not cold, but the ocean fog rarely seems to lift. Tapado on the patio, palm trees swaying in the ocean breeze, and a glass of wine is good therapy…

As I frequently mention, the availability of seafood in McAllen is amazing, but nothing beats our Gulf shrimp! This gorgeous soup/stew combines shrimp with (sustainable) barramundi (or other firm, white fish), and a variety of vegetables including plantains.

I tend to avoid dairy in my creamy soups, and in this case, coconut milk is perfect with the tropical vibe of the soup. Tapado is naturally gluten and dairy free!

I keep Lite Coconut Milk in my well-stocked pantry, and it’s usually my preference. If fat and calories do not concern you (😯), you can use the full-fat variety. At 35 minutes, it’s weeknight appropriate, but speaking from experience, it will wow your guests at a small dinner party…

🦐 What is Tapado?

While much of Guatemalan food celebrates the country’s Mayan heritage (maize, beans, tortillas), tapado is a dish that originated with its coastal Garifuna people. While most Garifuna are of mixed ancestry, their roots are in Afro-Caribbean culture.

Today, their global population is close to 300,000, and you will find many of them in the US and Canada. In Central America, you will find them in the coastal communities of Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and Nicaragua. Tapado can be as simple or elaborate as you want to make it. For this recipe, I specify a firm white fish like barramundi or cod, and shrimp. Why? Accessibility. Even landlocked cooks in the US interior typically have access to good quality fish and shellfish (albeit frozen). There is nothing wrong with frozen seafood folks! 

I love plantains (and don’t use them often enough). They are a traditional ingredient in the soup. My version (may not be authentic?) also uses sweet potatoes. If you hate sweet potatoes, substitute white potatoes, purple yams, butternut squash. Nothing is “etched in stone” in the kitchen. 😉

A sofrito – onion, garlic, bell pepper, and olive or coconut oil – provides the foundation for the soup. In my tapado research, I don’t think I came across a single version that did not include it. It’s kind of “a thing” in Latin and Caribbean cooking.

This Guatemalan tapado soup recipe is actually pretty healthy and balanced… no guilt allowed!

🥥 Is Coconut Milk “Healthy?”

I have made many different types of seafood soups, stews, and chowders including my Irish Scallop Bisque, my Healthy Corn and Shrimp Chowder, and my Seafood Stew with Saffron-infused Broth (needs new photos!). The defining (and amazing) flavor in a tapado, though, is the coconut milk. Wait! Coconut milk as a base hardly qualifies as “healthy,” right? As I mention in the introductory paragraph, this is “healthyish.” I do reserve the right to occasionally throw caution to the wind. 

I did lighten it up a bit by using lite coconut milk in place of the full fat coconut milk. Some recipes called for coconut “cream” and while I know how tasty that stuff is, I just can’t put it in my soup. Typically, the recipes used a full-fat coconut milk with varying amounts of broth or stock.

My hunch was to use only lite coconut milk (omitting the added broth), but I didn’t want a “one note” broth. It was then that I remembered a new ingredient I had picked up to try recently – a reduced sodium seafood broth concentrate. There are many brands available in both markets and online. The flavor is excellent (it doesn’t taste like a salty bouillon cube!). I whisked a tablespoon of the seafood broth concentrate with the lite coconut milk and the ground annato (achiote).

🍲 Instant Pot or Stove Top?

Instant Pots are definitely trending. I am not one to use my own Instant Pot for everything I make. (I do know plenty of people that do, and as long as it gets you cooking, it’s all good!).  I do have a couple of dishes that are one-pot (cook and eat) like Instant Pot Adzuki Bean Soup with Miso, Winter Squash, and Kale and Instant Pot Argentinian Beef Stew (Carbonada Criolla). 

More often than not, though, I use my Instant Pot (or stove top pressure cooker) to expedite some portion of a dish as in Instant Pot Cannelini Beans with Penne, Baby Kale, and Slow Roasted Tomatoes or to make beans or broth/stock. In contemplating how to present this dish, I had to really evaluate the benefits (if any) of using the IP/pressure cooker:

#1 There is only one instance that I have used a pressure cooker on fish – Instant Pot Salmon and Rice With Lemon Caper Chimichurri. It’s a really tasty and healthy salmon recipe, and the salmon cooks on a rack, together with the rice. The rice comes out tender rather than mushy, and the salmon is nicely cooked.

#2 I knew there was no way to get “hard” vegetables tender without overcooking the shrimp and fish.

#3 The sauté feature on the Instant Pot makes it a multi-method cooker.

Thus, I landed on using the Instant Pot for the sofrito, vegetables, and broth under pressure, and finishing the soup on the sauté setting… in a mere 5 minutes! If you don’t have a pressure cooker, this is still a relatively quick and easy dish to cook stove top.

The plantains take the longest time to cook. Green plantains (which I prefer for this recipe) take longer than plantains that are more ripe. Cutting the sweet potatoes in chunks, and the plantains in 1/4″ slices should get them done in about the same amount of time on the stove… 25-30 minutes.  

Either way, you’ll have this ready in under 45 minutes, and it’s dinner party worthy! I wrote the recipe for 2, but it’s easy to scale…

📋 Ingredients

Here is a quick look at the ingredients in the recipe – it’s handy to use at the grocery store or as a summary of what you need. Skip to the recipe for quantities.

• fish – Choose firm, mild-flavored white fish. I keep barramundi fillets in my freezer, and they’re perfect. Cod, halibut, flounder, snapper are all great options!
• shrimp – I live near the Gulf of Mexico, and our Gulf brown shrimp are amazing. Farm-raised are fine if you know the source is a good one. I use large shrimp, typically 26/30 count.
• plantains – Slightly under-ripe or even green plantains work best for this recipe. Ripe plantains are likely to disintegrate as they cook.
• sweet potatoes
• red bell pepper
• onion or shallots
• tiny tomatoes
• ground annatto – Annatto (aka achiote) is the red-orange food coloring/seasoning made from the seeds of the achiote tree (Bixa orellana), which grows in tropical regions in South and Central America. I keep both the ground annatto and achiote paste in my pantry. It has a sweet, peppery flavor.
• coconut milk – I specify lite coconut milk. You can certainly substitute full fat coconut milk. NOTE: Do not use the dairy free coconut milk you find in the Dairy section of your market. You want canned coconut milk found in the Asian foods section.
• stock concentrate or bouillon – As I mentioned earlier, you want the flavor of the stock or broth, but you don’t want to dilute the flavor of the coconut milk. I love this Better than Bouillon Fish Base. Chicken flavored would be fine as well.
• oregano – Fresh oregano is awesome in this recipe. It grows really well in McAllen, so I always have it. Substitute dried oregano leaves (Mediterranean style).

🔪 Instructions

Instant Pot Instructions

1. Make the sofrito – Start with a simple sofrito of onion, garlic, and sweet bell pepper (red, orange, yellow). My addition of fresh ginger pays homage to the Caribbean roots of the Garifuna people. I prefer refined coconut oil (smoke point is higher than unrefined coconut oil or olive oil).
2. Add the veggies – Next, add the sweet potato chunks, sliced plantain, and tiny tomatoes. (You may substitute chopped tomatoes, but it takes more time 🙂 ). Give this mixture a minute or two to sauté while you whisk the lite (or regular) coconut milk with the ground annato (achiote) and broth concentrate.
3. Add the liquids – Pour the whisked coconut milk, annatto, and broth concentrate into the pot. Cook on high pressure 4 minutes.
4. Finish the tapado – Do a quick pressure release, season, add the fish/shellfish, and simmer about 5 minutes. Garnish and serve!

We love to garnish our food! On the night I took photos, I garnished with chopped fresh cilantro and unsweetened and toasted coconut. This is by all accounts, a delightful dish. Just ask my husband, who endured eating it a few times in a few days. 😉

💭 Tips

Key to making a one-pot dish like this one work in the Instant Pot is to choose vegetables that require similar cooking times (like the plantains and sweet potatoes). Potatoes, butternut squash, and yucca should be similar. If you want to try a summer squash (quick cooking), you can add it with the fish and cut fairly thin slices or small dice.

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Healthy, fresh, quick soup recipes are a favorite at Andersen casa. We love this Mexican seafood soup, this moqueca recipe, and this corn and shrimp chowder. Don’t wait for a chilly day to enjoy a homemade soup recipe!

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