Puerto Rican Sofrito/ Recaofeatured

by Dahlia Morched on October 9, 2019

When you start dabbling in a new cuisine, things can seem a bit overwhelming. Sometimes there’s a lot of ingredients that are new to you and it can be intimidating. I love to cook all different types of food, and the takeaway of all my experimenting is that every cuisine has it’s pantry staples, and once you’ve got those down, learning becomes a breeze.

Well, for cooking Puerto Rican (or Cuban or Dominican…) food the key is in the sofrito. It’s the base of so many dishes. It’s the mirepoix, but way tastier, that gives Puerto Rican food it’s character.

If you want to cook this cuisine, you must start here.

The first time I cooked Puerto Rican food for my husband (who is, you guessed it, Puerto Rican) was seven years ago when we were dating. I made bistec encebollado steak with onions. I used store-bought jarred sofrito (hey, there was no ring yet). It was fine, but as I ventured more into the cuisine, it was clear that I needed to make the goods, the homemade sofrito, to make truly excellent Puerto Rican food.

It seemed like a lot of work at first, to gather all these ingredients and process them into a paste just to use a few tablespoons of it for a dish. My mother-in-law always had some in her freezer and taught me that often people put some in ice cube trays and freeze for future use. Now the initial time investment started making sense.

Make a big batch and use it for weeks and months in all your Puerto Rican (and not) dishes.You can use it in rice dishes, beans dishes, stews, for marinating meat, you name it. I’ll be sharing a few of the ways I use it on the blog soon.

So what’s in it?

Every cook has their own version of sofrito. There are main staple ingredients that vary by country, and some negotiable ones, and I’ve found that the proportions of each are flexible.

For this version I use ajis dulces and culantro (more on those below), cilantro, bell pepper, onions and garlic.

Growing up with Egyptian food, the base of most dishes was onions and garlic, so sometimes I go heavy on those. Some people add salt or spices, but I prefer to add those at the time of cooking.

There are two key ingredients in this type of sofrito. Culantro (not to be confused with cilantro, though that’s also included) and aji dulce, a small sweet pepper that can be described as a bit smokey in flavour. While these are probably the most important ingredients, depending on where you live they may be the hardest to get your hands on.

But please, for the most authentic Puerto Rican flavours, try to get them. They can be found in Latin or West Indian markets. It may mean an extra trip to a different grocer or side of town. But once you’ve made this big batch of sofrito it will last a long time and you’ll be ready to whip up delicious meals quickly.

Ajis dulces

The aji dulce peppers may also be labelled as ajicitos, aji gustoso, or aji cachucha. Seen below, they resemble habanero or scotch bonnet peppers, but without the blazing heat. Seriously, do not accidentally use either of those peppers. If you cannot find these, substitute with the same weight in cubanelle and/or green bell peppers.

Culantro

Culantro is pictured below. It has a strong cilantro-esque flavour, but is unique in it’s taste. It may be labelled as recao, or shadow beni or chadon beni in West Indian markets. This ingredient is so integral that in Puerto Ricao sofrito is actually also called recaito after it. So, try your best to get it. If you cannot find it, substitute with more cilantro.

Making and storing sofrito

Once you’ve gathered all your ingredients, its simply a matter of washing them, trimming or stemming where necessary, and blitzing in the food processor.

Ta-da!

Use some immediately if you wish, and freeze in small portions. Freezing in ice cube trays then transferring to freezer safe bags works perfectly for having tablespoon-size portions ready to go for all your dishes.

¡Buen provecho!

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5 from 2 votes