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The cuisine of Puerto Rico has its roots in the cuisine of Spain. It has almost nothing in common with Mexican cuisine, though, which surprises many first-time visitors from the United States or Europe. The cuisine also differs from that of other Latin countries and the United States.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Taino influences 1.2 Spanish influences 1.3 African influences 1.4 United States influences 2 Basic Ingredients 2.1 Grains and Legumes 2.2 Starchy tropical tubers 2.3 Vegetables 2.4 Meats and Poultry 2.5 Seafood and shellfish 2.6 Fruits 2.7 Starchy Fruits 2.8 Spices and Seasonings 3 Puerto Rican Dishes 3.1 Staples 3.2 Holiday dishes 3.3 Puerto Rican food in North American cities 4 See also 5 External links

Spain, Africa, Central America, South America, and the United States all have had an impact on how food is prepared in Puerto Rico. Some dishes also show traces of the island's original inhabitants, the Taíno Indians.

From the diet of the Taíno Arawak people come many tropical roots and tubers like yautía (taro) and especially Yuca (Yuca), from which thin cracker-like casabe bread is made. Ajíes (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 Taíno foods. The Taínos also grew varieties of beans and some maíz (corn/maize), but maíz 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 maíz, leaving more safeguarded plants like conucos (hills of yuca grown together).

Spanish influence in Puerto Rican cuisine is strong. Wheat bread, rice, garbanzos, olives, pimento peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro, oregano, basil, sugarcane, oranges, grapefruits, eggplants, ham, lard, chicken, beef, cheese, vinegar, and salted codfish all originate from Spain.

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 is 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. Panapén (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, panapén has also become an indispensable part of the Puerto Rican repertoire, both in puddings and crunchy, deep-fried tostones.

• Rice
• Beans - Generally called Granos colloquially
• Pigeon peas - Gandules
• Pink beans - Habichuelas rosadas

• Yautía - Taro
• Yuca - similar to a potato but more starchy. Usually boiled or Fried/ eaten by Brazilians commonly as well
• Batata - Sweet potato
• Boniato - Another kind of sweet potato
• Ñame (Yam)
• Malanga

• Eggplant - Berenjena
• West Indian pumpkin - Calabaza
• Apios - Not to be confused with celery
• Chayote
• Lerenes - Sweet corn root (Calathea allouia)

• Pork
• Ham
• Steak
• Chicken
• Turkey
• Guinea hen - More common in rural areas than urban ones

• West Indian Great Land Crab
• Salt codfish
• Octopus
• Conch
• Shrimp
• Chapín
• Oysters
• Cod

Fresh tropical fruit is important in the traditional daily diet in Puerto Rico.

• Bananas
• Papaya
• Mango
• Guineos niños - Finger-size sweet bananas
• Oranges
• Grapefruit
• Key limes
• Guava
• Tamarind
• Passion fruit
• Mamey (Summer only)
• Soursop
• Quenepas (Summer only).
• Avocado

• Plantains
• Breadfruit

• Adobo - A mix of garlic, onion powder, oregano sometimes, and other items
• Alcaparrado - A mix of green olives, pimentos, and capers
• Achiote or Bija - annatto (Bixa orellana)
• Recao/Culantro - Green spiny leaf
• Garlic
• Onions
• Cooking sweet peppers (Capsicum chinense Aji dulce)
• Sofrito - A mixture of sweet peppers, onions, recao/culantro, garlic, olive oil, and other spices
• Oregano
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• Sazón - a seasoning mix consisting of a blend of different spices, often used with sofrito to season when cooking

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 sauté 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 y 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 plátanos (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), chapín (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 (yautía), 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

• Stuffed Turkey - From November to January Puerto Ricans enjoy holiday parties and large family dinners almost daily, starting with the Thanksgiving turkey which is stuffed with a ground beef and/or pork mixture containing almonds, raisins, olives, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, and garlic. Instead of the thin slices seen in the North, a baked turkey in Puerto Rico is often cut into large blocks or chunks to be served on a plate. Rice is a mandatory course in dishes such as Arroz con Gandules (rice with pigeon peas), Arroz con Tocino (rice with bacon), Arroz Mamposteao, and the sweet dessert Arroz con Dulce (rice pudding).

• Roasted Pork - Pork is central to Puerto Rican holiday cooking, especially the lechón (spit-roasted piglet). Holiday feasts might include several pork dishes, such as pernil (a baked fresh ham shoulder seasoned in garlic and oregano), morcilla (a black blood sausage), tripa (tripe), jamón con pina (ham and pineapple), gandinga (stewed pork innards) and chuletas ahumadas (smoked cutlets).

• Pasteles - For many Puerto Rican families, the quintessential holiday season dish is pasteles, which English-speakers often literally translate to "cakes". Pasteles are not a sweet pastry or cake, but a soft dough-like mass wrapped in a banana or plantain leaf and boiled. In the center of the dough are choice pieces of chopped meat, chicken, raisins, spices, olives, red peppers and often a garbanzo bean. Puerto Rican pasteles are similar in shape, size, and cooking technique to Mexican tamales. The dough in a Mexican tamal is made from corn meal; while in a Puerto Rican pastel it is made from either cooked green bananas or starchy tropical roots. The wrapper in a Mexican tamal is a corn shuck; the wrapper in a Puerto Rican pastel is a banana leaf. Pasteles also use different spices than tamales. The making of pasteles is a labor-intensive social activity. Many family members will get together for hours or days to make dozens to hundreds of pasteles to share with friends and loved ones. Pasteles from the Island are often shipped overseas packed in dry ice during the long Christmas season. They are received as a nostalgic, much treasured gift.

• Sweets - Sweets are common in Puerto Rican cuisine. During the holidays, the most popular are deserts such as Arroz con Dulce (sweet rice pudding), Budín de Pan (bread pudding), Barriguitas de Vieja (deep-fried sweet pumpkin fritters), Tembleque (coconut pudding), Flan (egg custard), Bizcocho de Ron (rum cake), Mantecaditos (manteca=lard; shortbread cookies), Polvorones (pólvora=gunpowder, another crunchy cookie with a dusty sweet cinnamon exterior), Ajónjoli (a toasted sesame seed bar bound together by honey), Mampostiales (mampostería=an early form of concrete, used in the forts of Old San Juan; a very thick, gooey candy bar of caramelized brown sugar and coconut chips, challenging to chew and with a strong, almost molasses-like flavor), Dulce de Leche (milk caramel pudding), Pastelillos de Guayaba (guava pastries), Besitos de Coco (coconut kisses), Tarta de Guayaba (guava tarts), and Tortitas de Calabaza (pumpkin tarts).

• Coquito - A popular Christmastime drink is coquito, an eggnog-like rum and coconut milk-based homemade beverage. The holiday season is also a time that many piña coladas are prepared, underscoring the combination of tropical America (pineapples) and Africa (coconuts) seen in Puerto Rican cuisine.

• Cuchifritos - In New York, cuchifritos are quite popular.
• El Jibarito (Plaintain Sandwich) - In Chicago, El Jibarito is a popular dish. The word jíbaro in Puerto Rico means a man from the countryside, especially a small landowner or humble farmer from far up in the mountains. Jíbaro is a term strongly associated with preserving the traditional values and the culture of the Island. Typically served with Spanish rice, Jibaritos consist of a meat along with mayonnaise, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and onions, all sandwiched between a fried plantain, known as a canoa (canoe). In the early 20th century, bread made from wheat (which would have to be imported) was expensive out in the mountain towns of the Cordillera Central, and jíbaros were made from plantains which are still grown there on the steep hillsides.

• Caribbean cuisine
• Cuisine of the United States

• The Rican Chef - Recipes from the cultural magazine El Boricua, Puerto Rico
• Puerto Rican Recipes
• Pasteles recipe

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Regional Cuisines	Asia · Europe · Caribbean · South Asia · Latin America · Middle East · North America · Africa · Other cuisines...
Foods	Bread · Pasta · Cheese · Rice · Sauces · Soups · Desserts · Herbs and spices - Other ingredients
Preparation techniques and cooking items	Techniques · Utensils · Weights and measures
See also	Kitchens · Meals · Wikibooks: Cookbook