The main goal of this paper is to develop a methodology to quantitatively assess resilience to food insecurity. The developed methodology is applied to Nicaraguan rural households hit by Mitch Hurricane in 1999. The results show that the proposed resilience index is a good predictor of households’ food security. The proposed resilience index highlights small landowners and agricultural wage workers as less resilient vis-à-vis other livelihood groups. Moreover this paper shows how a resilience index can be used in policy impact evaluation.