6 Latino Thanksgiving Dishes for Sabor & Tradition

These Latino Thanksgiving dishes are traditional family recipes that work beautifully for your holiday cooking and feasting. It’s true that Thanksgiving is not a holiday we celebrate in the most of the Spanish-speaking places we come from (except Puerto Rico). But once we live here, most Latinos adopt this U.S. holiday, which is all about family, gratitude and togetherness. Sprinkling a little authentic sabor into your family feast this Turkey Day is a soul-filling way to add family traditions and flavors to your table.

Ready to wow your guests? Check out these 6 delicioso recipes trusted by 6 of our favorite Latino homecooks to cook their way home for the holidays.

Holiday Feast Dish 1: Pavochón Your Turkey for Sabor and Spice

If you think roast turkey is a bit bland, we have your sabor solution: Pavochón! A mashup of the words pavo (turkey) and lechon (roast pork), pavochon is a Puerto Rican-style whole turkey that is marinated with lots of adobo, sazon and spices like a holiday pernil, to give it flavorful, super-rich-tasting oomph. Liliana M. Molina, a Boricua who lives in Los Angeles, has been making this bacon-wrapped pavochón recipe (including its savory-sweet ground pork, beef, raisin and almond stuffing) for almost 30 years for her friend group in L.A. Once you try it, you will never go back, Liliana promises.

Holiday Feast Dish 2: Arroz con Gandules for a Side

While you’re passing the mashed potatoes, how about also offering friends and family Doña Felipa’s family-famous recipe for arroz con gandules — for a little Puerto Rican sabor on the side?

Holiday Dish 3: Flan de Calabaza or Pumpkin Flan for Dessert

Instead of the expected apple and/or pumpkin pie, how about pumpkin flan, made either the classic way thanks to this family recipe from Edith (mmm! que rico) or with a Familia Kitchen Healthy & Delicioso flip: dairy-free and with less sugar?

Holiday Dish 4: Flancocho for Dessert

If your guests love chocolate, serve them this D.R.-style flancocho, made as Dominican cake tradition dictates: with pineapple juice. Flancocho is 50% chocolate bizcocho, 50% lush flan: 100% rico.

Holiday Dish 5: Picadillo in Your Stuffing

Here’s one of our favorite ideas for Latino Thanksgiving dishes. Give your stuffing criollo Puerto Rican or Cuban flavor by mixing in beef picadillo with olives and mucho garlic to the bread, celery, onion and garlic—bypassing the usual sausage?

Holiday Dish 6: Mole for Turkey Leftovers

Time to talk leftovers. What better way to use what wasn’t devoured from your turkey (especially the dark meat and drumsticks!) than to serve it in a traditional mole sauce or in your tamales filling to feed the crowd still hanging around your house after T Day?

Spice Up Your Thanksgiving With These 6 Latino Dishes!

Here are 6 of Familia Kitchen’s favorite family-famous dishes to add traditional sabor to your Thanksgiving and keep it going for your Christmas and holiday feasting this year. Check the stars of our Thanksgiving menu lineup: Make arroz con gandules as an alternate side to serve alongside las mashed papas. For dessert, try flancocho or pumpkin flan—super rico! And your Thanksgiving table will be the talk of your family and friends, garantizado, if you add savory beef picadillo to your stuffing. And when it’s all done, put those super-rico pavo leftovers in a family-famous mole recipe or in tamales because the crowd is always hungry for homecooking, hecho con amor.

The Best Flancocho Ever — Chocolate Cake + Flan

Flancocho is the choco-licious creamy dessert of our Latino dreams. It’s half flan, half chocolate cake or bizcocho (which is how you get the word: flan-cocho), and 100% delicioso. This combo postre marries two of our all-time favorites, and it is a new classic we’ll be making all year (and for birthdays and even Christmas!). That’s how good it is….

Pumpkin or Calabaza Flan 3 Ways: 2 Classic & Dairy-free

One year for Thanksgiving, instead of her traditional flan, Mami made a delicious, super-creamy pumpkin flan. We loved it. For this Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, I thought it would be fun to take her traditional version and experiment with how to make it healthier. That’s my favorite thing to do: flip recipes. My plan was to make a dairy-free…

My Husband Pat’s Puerto Rican Picadillo

This picadillo recipe came to our family from my Puerto Rican husband Pat. He says that he learned to make it from his Titi Rosa, more than 40 years ago, but I would venture to say he added the capers and made this his own version of the family classic recipe because he LOVES capers. When Pat and I first…

My Aunt Coty’s Mole with Guajillos, Cocoa & Peanuts

This mole is the delicioso recipe that Kendra Alfaro Ruiz’s aunt made over and over for their family. She uses 12 guajillo chile and tweaked the ingredients over the years to her liking and it became her famous-family dish. ”My aunt’s name is Maria but her nickname is Coty. She is a pastry chef,” says Kendra, ”She was born and…

Luis’ Tamales from Guatemala

This family recipe for tamales is from one of our favorite Guatemalan homecooks: Luis Yanes. ”I live in the New York area now, but I grew up in Guatemala watching my family—my great aunt, my grandmother and my mom—make these pork or chicken tamales, says Luis. ”Of course, tamales required the help of our entire family, but they were always…

Doña Felipa’s Puerto Rican Arroz con Gandules

Puerto Rican arroz con gandules is the dish that sealed the deal between Doña Felipa and me. We had chatted a couple times, as neighbors do, across the fence between our houses, after I overheard her speaking Spanish on the phone. As anyone who knows her quickly learns, Doña Felipa Saez loves family, God, cooking and music. One day—surprise!—she knocked…

Find more family-famous recipes for your holiday cooking at FamiliaKitchen.com