Puerto Rican Cuisine

Puerto Rican cooking is a unique blend of tasty Spanish, African, Taíno, and American influences, using such indigenous ingredients as coriander, papaya, cacao, nispero, apio, plantains, and yampee. Locals call their cuisine "cocina criolla."

Lunch and dinner generally begin with sizzling-hot appetizers such as bacalaitos (crunchy cod fritters), surullitos, sweet plump cornmeal fingers and empanadillas (crescent-shaped turnovers filled with lobster, crab, or beef). The aroma that wafts from kitchens throughout Puerto Rico comes from adobo and sofrito, both blends of herbs and spices that give many of the native foods their distinctive taste and color. Adobo (made by crushing together peppercorns, oregano, garlic, salt, olive oil, and lime juice or vinegar), is rubbed into meats before they are roasted. Sofrito, a potpourri of onions, garlic, coriander, and peppers browned in either olive oil and colored with achiote (annatoo seeds), which imparts the bright-yellow color to the island's rice, soups, and stews.