When it comes to traditional Puerto Rican recipes, you must build your flavors with sofrito and I’m not referring to store bought. You need Homemade Puerto Rican Sofrito! It is the guaranteed way to develop those bold flavors that everyone raves about. This recipe is easy, packs flavors and is sure to please.
The Herbs
Sofrito is a puree of finely diced fresh herbs and aromatics. It is added first in recipes, in order to build flavor. Once sauteed, it is seasoned and combined with proteins or veggies.
The key herbs in homemade sofrito are: cilantro and culantro (recao for my boricuas). While some recipes include only 1 of the herbs, I like to add both – because double the herbs, means double the flavor!
While cilantro is much more common and easy to find, culantro is a bit tricky. However after researching and doing my own personal hunting, I find culantro at most Asian Supermarkets. If you still can’t find culantro, I would recommend doubling the portion of cilantro.
Some recipes substitute culantro with parsley, but I do not recommend that option because It changes the flavor profile to something similar to chimichurri; (which is delicious but not exactly what you are aiming for).
The Aromatics
A part of what makes homemade Puerto Rican Sofrito so delicious and addicting is the SMELL. Preparing a batch of this recipe releases a potent aroma all throughout your house, that is sure to make you instantly hungry! My go to aromatics for this homemade sofrito recipe are:
- TONS of garlic cloves
- white onions
- aji dulces (aka) sweet cubanelle peppers
- and bell peppers.
For some background, aji dulces are sweet colorful peppers that are used in recipes throughout the Caribbean. They are considered distant cousins from the scotch bonnet peppers that are popular in Jamaica; just aji dulces are not as spicy. They have a very mild flavor. If you can’t find them, extra sweet bell peppers are good substitute in this recipe.
I recommend preparing sofrito in large batches and storing it in the freezer for future use. Store it in ice cubes or in small storage containers for easy portions.
Cooking with Sofrito
Once you make your batch of homemade sofrito, you can either use it immediately in your next dinner or store it in the freezer for future use. Since sofrito is an aromatic herb base, I like to cook mine with a touch of olive oil, tomato sauce, ground cumin and the traditional adobo all purpose seasoning. To really elevate this sofrito recipe, you can also cook it with red wine to deepen the tomato flavor. Below I’ll include a list of recipes that use this delicious sofrito.
Puerto Rican Recipes with Homemade Sofrito
- Habichuelas Guisadas – Puerto Rican Stewed Red Beans: http://nataknowsbest.com/habichuelas-guisadas-puerto-rican-stewed-red-beans/
- Puerto Rican Empanadas – Empanadillas/Pastelillos: http://nataknowsbest.com/puerto-rican-empanadas/
- Pastelón – Sweet Plantain Lasagna: http://nataknowsbest.com/puerto-rican-pastelon/
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Homemade Puerto Rican Sofrito
Ingredients
- 1 bundle of cilantro
- 1 bundle of culantro/recao
- 1 small yellow onion
- 3 to 5 cloves of garlic
- 5 to 6 small aji dulce peppers (may substitute with bell peppers)
- 1 medium red bell pepper
- 1 medium green bell pepper
Instructions
- Be sure all herbs and peppers are well cleaned.
- Then, finely chop the garlic, onion, aji dulces and bell peppers. Add them into a food processor or blender. *Remember to remove the membrane and seeds from the peppers*
- Next add the bundles of cilantro and culantro and blend until roughly incorporated.
- Freeze sofrito for later or cook with olive oil, seasonings and tomato sauce.
