🇵🇪 The cattle breeds of Peru

Cattle are newcomers to Peru. Spanish settlers brought them in the 1500s, and they matter chiefly as beef on the plate and as milk and cheese in the kitchen. Peru's own food traditions lean on potatoes, maize, quinoa and the Pacific, so cattle keep a modest place beside them.

• Spanish settlers in the 1500s brought beef, with rice and wheat, to Peru's tables.
• Lomo saltado, a beef stir-fry with onions, tomatoes and chips, came from Chinese cooks.
• Tacu-tacu, fried rice and beans, came from African cooks and is served with steak or eggs.
• Cow's milk and cheese count among the staples the Spanish left behind.
• Peru ranks among the world's top two producers of fishmeal for livestock feed.

Cattle in Peru

Cattle play a small part in Peru's food story, and they are not natives of the land. Spanish settlers brought them in the 1530s, among new meats, grains and kitchen ways such as frying. They hold a modest place in a food culture built on other things: the potato above all, then maize, quinoa and other Andean grains, beans, chillies and the fish of the Pacific coast. Beef entered everyday eating largely through immigrant mixing in the late nineteenth century, when Chinese cooks stir-fried it with local produce. Cow's milk and cheese, also Spanish introductions, are now ordinary staples. Peru's fame in farming rests on the variety of its native crops rather than on its herds, and its cattle are borrowed animals that have settled neatly into a kitchen shaped by the Andes and the sea.

Milk, butter and beef

Beef reached Peru with the Spanish and now appears in some of the country's best-loved dishes. Lomo saltado, born of Chinese cooking, tosses strips of beef with onions, tomatoes and chips. Tacu-tacu, a fried cake of rice and beans brought by African cooks, is often served with a steak or an egg. Cow's milk and cheese are Spanish staples that took root, alongside wheat and rice. Beef shares the plate with pork and chicken, also introductions, but the true stars remain native: potatoes, maize, quinoa and the chillies that give the food its colour. Even feed for farm animals leans on the sea, through high-protein fishmeal from the coastal fishery.