Colombia's answer to the hearty family lunch has gone global. Sancocho, the slow-simmered broth that anchors weekend gatherings across the country, ranked 94th on TasteAtlas' 2026 list of the 100 best-rated soups in the world — and it was the only Colombian dish to make the cut.
What makes the recognition interesting is that sancocho isn't one recipe. Depending on where you are in Colombia, the pot might hold chicken, hen, beef or pork, along with corn on the cob, plantain, cassava, potatoes, yam and squash. Carrots, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, celery and garlic often join in. The version from Valle del Cauca is especially famous: chicken sancocho served with white rice, avocado and ají, a fiery homemade sauce. The name itself traces back to the Spanish verb sancochar, meaning to parboil, and cousin versions of the dish appear across Latin America — though Colombia's regional twists give it a distinct identity.
Sancocho is less restaurant food than home ritual. It's the dish cooked in huge quantities for family celebrations and long Sunday lunches, a whole meal in a bowl. That's exactly the kind of everyday cooking TasteAtlas says its rankings aim to spotlight, drawing on nearly 60,000 community ratings — 33,446 of which passed the platform's legitimacy checks — to lift traditional dishes into the international conversation.
The winners' list is a world tour in itself. Paraguay's vori-vori, little corn flour and cheese dumplings in broth, took first place with a 4.7 out of 5 rating. Turkey's beyran corbasi from Gaziantep, a lamb and rice soup laced with garlic and pepper paste, came second, and Jakarta's coconut-milk Soto Betawi took third. Japan dominated the top five with Yokohama-style iekei ramen in fourth and Fukuoka's tonkotsu ramen in fifth.
For travellers, the takeaway is simple: put sancocho on your Colombian food itinerary. It shows up everywhere from Bogotá kitchens to Valle del Cauca fondas, it's affordable, filling and best eaten the way locals do — slowly, with rice, avocado and a spoonful of ají on the side. TasteAtlas itself frames the list as a prompt to explore traditional food rather than a definitive ranking, so treat 94th place as an invitation rather than a verdict.
