Changua

Changua is one of Colombia's most traditional and humble breakfast dishes, a warm, nourishing milk soup from the cold highlands of Boyacá and Cundinamarca. This simple preparation combines milk and water, gently simmered with scallions and seasoned with salt, then enriched with poached eggs that cook directly in the milky broth. Pieces of stale bread or calado are added to soak up the liquid, becoming soft and comforting. Changua may seem unusual to those unfamiliar with it, a savory milk soup for breakfast, but to generations of Colombians from the high Andean plateau, it is the most soothing way to start a cold morning. It is said that Muisca indigenous people prepared a version of this dish long before Spanish colonization, making changua one of the oldest surviving recipes in Colombian cuisine.