The Corn Flour Question
An arepa is made from masarepa — pre-cooked white corn flour. Not cornmeal. Not polenta. Not masa harina. Not regular corn flour. Masarepa. These are not interchangeable and the differences are not subtle.
Masarepa is made from corn that has been cooked, dried, and then ground. This pre-cooking process changes the starch structure completely. You can mix masarepa with water and form it into shape within minutes. Try that with raw corn flour and you'll get something that crumbles when you look at it and tastes like wet chalk when you cook it.
The brand is PAN. Harina P.A.N. It's yellow packaging. It's in almost every Latin grocery store in the world. If you can't find it, you can't make a proper arepa. This is not negotiable.
The Thickness Problem
The second issue is thickness. Colombian arepas — specifically costeña-style arepas from the Caribbean coast — are thin. About 1cm. They cook through quickly, get a proper char on the outside, and have that slightly crispy exterior with a soft interior.
What I see in restaurants outside Colombia is usually a thick puck, like a corn hockey disc, that's pale on the outside and raw-tasting in the middle. This is not an arepa. This is a mistake in the shape of an arepa.
The Heat Problem
Arepas need high heat. A cast iron griddle or skillet on high heat with very little oil — just enough to prevent sticking. You want colour. You want char in spots. You want the outside to have some resistance before the inside yields.
If you're cooking arepas on medium heat and they come out pale, steamed, and soft all the way through, you've missed the entire point of the technique. The contrast between the slightly crispy outside and the soft inside is what makes an arepa worth eating.
Regional Variation is Real
It's worth acknowledging that arepas vary significantly across Colombia and Venezuela. Costeñas are thin and griddled. Paisas from Medellín are thicker and often stuffed. Venezuelan arepas are different again — thicker, split open, filled. None of these is more correct than the others. They're just different dishes that share a base ingredient.
What I'm defending here is specifically the Colombian coastal arepa, which is what most people mean when they say "arepa" in an international context. Get the flour right, get the thickness right, get the heat right. That's the whole recipe.
What to Put on It
The correct answer for a plain arepa is butter. Just butter. Not guacamole, not salsa, not cheese foam. Butter melting into a hot fresh arepa is one of the great simple pleasures in food. Everything else is optional.
If you want to go further: hogao, the Colombian tomato and onion sauce, is the natural next step. Queso costeño if you can find it. Huevo perito — soft scrambled eggs — if you're making breakfast. These are additions to an already-correct foundation, not compensations for a wrong one.