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🌍 Country of the Week · A Spin the Globe Teacher's Guide
Dominican Republic
Dominican RepublicNorth America · This week's dish comes from Cibao
About Dominican Republic
Dominican cooking is comforting and citrusy, la bandera (rice, beans, and stewed meat), mangú mashed plantains, and hearty sancocho stew. Sofrito, plantain, and a Spanish-African-Taíno heritage define the plate.
Mangu is made from green plantain, boiled and mashed with the cooking water until smooth, and its standard companions have a name: los tres golpes, the three hits, meaning fried cheese, fried salami and fried onions on the side. It is breakfast, and the salami in question is a distinctly Dominican product rather than an Italian one.
Sancocho is a Sunday and a celebration rather than a weeknight, and the ambitious version is sancocho de siete carnes, seven meats in one pot with yuca, yautia, ñame and plantain until the broth thickens on its own. La bandera, the everyday plate of rice, beans and stewed meat, takes its name from the flag.
The wider picture: A collision of Indigenous, colonial, and immigrant tables.
This week's dish: Mangú
Silky mashed green plantains under pickled red onions, the Dominican breakfast that carries the day.
Serves 3 · Prep 15 min · Cook 25 min · Difficulty: easy
See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →
Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.
Discussion prompts
1. Find Dominican Republic on a world map or globe. It sits in North America. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?
2. Mangú comes from Cibao, in Dominican Republic. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?
3. Read the short story behind Mangú. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Dominican Republic shaped what ends up on the plate there?
4. Compare Mangú to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Dominican Republic about how they make and share it?
5. After you cook Mangú, add Dominican Republic to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.
🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers