Recipe
🍳 BREAKFAST
Sopaipillas
Golden pumpkin-dough fritters, soft and faintly sweet, fried up on cold Chilean mornings and eaten with pebre or chancaca syrup.
Chilean · medium · serves 6
prep 25 min · cook 15 min
~391 cal · 6g protein · 43g carbs · 22g fat · 2g fiber · 1g sugars · 3g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Sopaipillas are Chile's fried dough, and like their Argentine cousins they are inseparable from cold, rainy days, when street vendors and home cooks alike turn them out by the dozen. In central Chile they carry a distinctive ingredient: pumpkin.
Cooked, mashed squash is worked into the dough, giving the sopaipillas their golden colour, faint sweetness, and tender texture. Rolled, cut into rounds, pricked, and fried until puffed and golden, they are equally at home savoury or sweet.
They are eaten warm with pebre or mustard as a snack, or bathed in chancaca, a spiced raw-sugar syrup, to make sopaipillas pasadas for a sweet treat. Comforting and cheap, they are the taste of a Chilean winter afternoon.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian, vegan and dairy-, nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cooked mashed squash or pumpkin
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup melted fat or oil
4 cups , for frying
1 tsp salt
Instructions
1
Mash the warm squash smooth, then mix in the flour, baking powder, salt, and melted fat to a soft dough.
2
Knead lightly until it comes together, then rest, covered, for 15 minutes.
3
Roll out to a quarter-inch, cut into rounds, and prick each a few times with a fork.
4
Fry in hot oil until puffed and golden on both sides; drain and serve with pebre or chancaca syrup.
Chilean central-valley winter cooking.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Central Valley. Summer here means pastel de choclo, a bake of ground fresh sweetcorn spread over beef, a piece of chicken, olives and hard-boiled egg, dusted with sugar so the top caramelises under the heat. Winter means cazuela, a clear broth holding one piece of meat, a wedge of pumpkin and a whole potato.
🗺️
Chile. Two southern specifics carry the country. Curanto on Chiloe is a pit of fire-heated stones layered with shellfish, meat and potato dumplings, covered with nalca leaves and turf and left to steam like a buried pressure cooker; its name comes from the Mapudungun for stony. Merken is the Mapuche condiment, cacho de cabra chillies sun-dried, wood-smoked and ground with toasted coriander seed and salt.
🌍
South America. The Andes are the potato's homeland and still hold something like four thousand native varieties, selected over thousands of years for altitude, colour and texture. The high plateau also worked out how to keep them: frozen overnight in the cold, trodden to press the water out, then dried in the sun into chuno, which stores for years.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Chile
Porotos GranadosSummer stew of fresh beans, corn, squash, and basil, Chile’s pre-Columbian trinity in one pot.
CompletoA hot dog buried under diced tomato, mashed avocado, sauerkraut, and mayonnaise, Chile's overloaded snack-lunch.
Leche AsadaA rustic baked milk custard with a scorched, caramelised top, Chile's homelier cousin of crème caramel.
Browse all Chile recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Rolling pin.
Storing it: Fried food is best eaten fresh while crisp. Re-crisp leftovers in a hot oven or air fryer; the microwave makes them soft.
Make it a Chile meal
Mote con HuesilloDrink
Leche AsadaDessert
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Frequently asked questions
What is Sopaipillas?
Golden pumpkin-dough fritters, soft and faintly sweet, fried up on cold Chilean mornings and eaten with pebre or chancaca syrup.
Where does Sopaipillas come from?
Sopaipillas is a Chilean dish from Central Valley, Chile.
Can Sopaipillas be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Sopaipillas recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Sopaipillas safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Sopaipillas take to make?
About 40 minutes total (25 minutes prep, 15 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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