Puerto Rico tourist information

The cuisine of Puerto Rico has its roots in the cuisine of Spain and West Africa. The cuisine also differs from that of other Latin countries and the United States.

From the diet of the Taino Arawak people come many tropical roots and tubers like yautia (taro) and especially Yuca (Yuca), from which thin cracker-like casabe bread is made. Ajies (a small sweet pepper, it should not be confused with the hot pepper), recao/culantro (spiny leaf), achiote (annatto), peanuts, guavas, pineapples, jicacos (cocoplum), quenepas (mamincillo), lerenes (Guinea arrowroot), calabazas (tropical pumpkins), and guanabanas (soursops) are all Taino foods.

The Tainos also grew varieties of beans and some maiz (corn/maize), but maiz was not as dominant in their cooking as it was for the peoples living on the mainland of Mesoamerica. This is due to the frequent hurricanes that Puerto Rico experiences, which destroy crops of maiz, leaving more safeguarded plants like conucos (hills of yuca grown together).

Spanish influence is also seen in Puerto Rican cuisine. Wheat bread, garbanzos, olives, Olive Oil, pimento peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro, oregano, basil, sugarcane, oranges, grapefruits, eggplants, ham, lard, chicken, beef, and cheese.

Coconuts, coffee (brought by the Arabs and Corsos to Yauco from Kafa, Ethiopia), okra, yams, sesame seeds, gandules (pigeon peas or Congo peas, in English) sweet bananas, plantains, and malanga all come to Puerto Rico from Africa. African cooks introduced a preference for deep frying food. The tradition of cooking complex stews and rice dishes in iron pots such as rice and beans are also thought to be originally African.

The last century of association with the United States has also impacted Puerto Rican cooking traditions and favorite foods. The most significant has to do with how people fry food. The early Spaniards brought olive oil for cooking and frying, but importing it from Spain made it very expensive, and cooks on the Island shifted over to lard which could be produced locally. In the last 50-60 years, corn oil produced in the United States has taken the place of lard for making cuchifritos and alcapurrias.

Salchichas (canned Vienna sausages) were introduced in about 1898;, today, they are scrambled with eggs and cooked in other dishes. Galletas de soda (soda crackers in tins) are an American product of the 19th and early 20th centuries that reproduce the crunchy texture of the earlier casabe bread and can be kept crunchy (in the tins) in high tropical humidity.

From the tropical American mainland also come parcha (passionfruit), cocoa, papaya, tomatoes, and avocados. Panapen (breadfruit) was first imported into the British Caribbean colonies from the South Pacific as cheap slave food in the late 18th century. After spreading throughout the Antilles, panapen has also become an indispensable part of the Puerto Rican repertoire, both in puddings and crunchy, deep-fried tostones.

Puerto Rican dishes are well seasoned with combinations of flavorful spices, though they are not as spicy as dishes from Mexico, India, or parts of China. The base of many Puerto Rican main dishes involves sofrito, similar to the mirepoix of French cooking, or the "trinity" of Creole cooking. A proper sofrito is a saute of chopped garlic, onions, recao/culantro (not cilantro, but a similarly flavored green leaf), a sweet pepper like Italian cooking peppers, tomatoes, and small chunks of fatback bacon.

• Arroz Con Gandules - Puerto Rico's national dish, it is a rice-and-pigeon-pea dish seasoned with sofrito and smoked ham.
• Arroz Con Habichuelas - Literally "rice and beans", this dish is so common that the phrase "rice and beans" means essentially the same as "our daily bread" in northern countries. Dried pink beans are slowly stewed with chunks of calabaza (tropical pumpkin) flavored with a sofrito base, and then ladled over a mound of rice. Sticky medium-grained rice is more popular in Puerto Rico than long grain rice.
• Plaintains - Almost as popular as arroz y habichuelas are platanos (plantains, or cooking bananas. They are daily fare, whether cooked green, deep-fried and mashed as tostones, or boiled and seasoned with escabeche. They can be let to mature until they are spotted outside and golden inside, and then deep-fried as maduros or amarillos. Sometimes they are baked instead of deep-fried.
• Empanadillas de carne/mariscos/queso - Meat, seafood, or cheese turnovers usually called "empanadas" in other Spanish-speaking countries. On the eastern side of the island empanadillas are known as pastelillos, although pastelillo also refers to a pastry turnover.
• Mofongo - Mofongo is a popular Afro-Boricua dish, made from fried green plantains seasoned with garlic, olive oil and pork cracklings, then mashed. Mofongo is usually served with a fried meat and a fish broth soup.
• Seafood - On certain coastal towns of the island, such as Luquillo, Fajardo, and Cabo Rojo, seafood is quite popular, although much of it is imported. Only a tiny number of fishermen ply the waters off Puerto Rico today, and their catch never leaves their seacoast towns. The fact that the island sits next to the deepest part of the Atlantic means there is no wide continental shelf to foster a rich offshore fishery; neither are there any large rivers to dump extra nutrients into the sea that could build up a fish population. Popular seafood include bacalao (codfish), chapin (tropical fish), pulpo (octopus, not always canned), carrucho (conch), camarones (shrimp), langosta (lobster) (most commonly caught in the surrounding waters), and jueyes (crabs).
• Alcapurrias - This food consists of a seasoned meat or crab filling wrapped in a seasoned dough of mashed green bananas and taro root (yautia), which is then deep fried.
• Arepas/Domplines - These are fried rounds of flour-based dough. Sometimes they can contain coconut (known as arepas de coco). They are sometimes stuffed with seafood.
• Bacalaitos Fritos - These are fritters made from a pancake-like batter containing codfish, flour, and seasoning.
• Morcilla - A type of blood sausage.
• Surullos - Fried corn meal logs, sometimes stuffed with cheese.
• Queso Frito - Fried Cheese