Sofrito 101: How to Make Puerto Rico’s Essential Cooking Base

Sofrito is a non-negotiable in the Puerto Rican cocina. ”If you’re cooking Boricua, you gotta have sofrito,” says Michelle Ezratty Murphy, one of our favorite homecooks and the winner of our first-ever Familia Kitchen Recipe Contest for her Puerto Rican arroz con pollo.

Most traditional Puerto Rican dishes start with this aromatic cooking base, she explains. And “this is the sofrito recipe we make in my house.” It is phenomenal, we assure you. It’s one of our essential ingredients in the Familia Kitchen test kitchen.

What Is Sofrito?

Not sure what sofrito adds to food or how it’s made? You’ve probably tasted it without knowing you were eating it, if you’ve ever had a Puerto Rican dish, says Michelle. Sofrito is a savory blend of mostly aromatics, including (depending on who’s making it) onions, green pepper, aji dulce (sweet pepper), tomato, garlic, culantro and/or cilantro, and other spices. Michelle likes to add red bell pepper to her sofrito as well. If you live in the States and can’t find aji dulce, easy available, mild Cubanelle peppers make a great substitute.

”I blend these ingredients in big batches and freeze in ice cube trays. Then, it’s easy to pop out the frozen sofrito squares from the trays and store them in zip bags in my freezer for easy storage,” says Michelle.

When ready to cook your dish, sauté a frozen cube or two of sofrito in olive oil. The resulting aromatic cooking base is used to deepen the flavor of traditional dishes like beef picadillo and pastelón (Puerto Rican ”lasagna” made with plantains instead of pasta layers).

Sofrito is also essential, of course, to the dish that inspired us to launch Familia Kitchen: arroz con pollo. We need great sofrito recipes, so thank you for sending us yours, Michelle.

”I like to use sofrito in soups and asopaos — things that are stewed — because garlic can get bitter when not first sautéed. My rule is to use sofrito in a recipe for something that is going to simmer a while on my stove,” she explains.

“I make my sofrito from memory now, after years of whipping it up to use in soups, stews, rice and beef dishes for that essential Boricua sabor que siempre satisfies. ¡Buen provecho!”

How to Make Puerto Rican Sofrito

Recipe by Michelle Ezratty Murphy

3.4 from 44 votes

Cuisine: Puerto Rican

Servings

40

servings

Prep time

5

minutes

Cooking time

2

minutes

Ingredients

• 1 yellow onion, roughly chopped

• 1 green bell pepper, roughly chopped

• 3 ají dulce or (if you can find them) 1 to 2 sweet chili peppers

• 3 leaves culantro, optional (if you can find it)

• 1 small bunch cilantro

• 1 head garlic, large peeled (about 10 to 12 cloves)

Directions

• Put all ingredients into a blender and mix for about 10 seconds or until all ingredients have been mixed together thoroughly.
• Store in a glass jar for up to 5 days in the refrigerator or freeze for up to 1 year.
• This makes 4 to 5 cups of sofrito or about 40 ice-cube-size servings.

Notes

• Michelle doesm’t use sofrito for a sauce or for any recipe where it doesn’t get “stewed.” In those cases, she takes that exact mix of ingredients and sautés them first instead of putting them into the blender raw.
• Freezing sofrito can be a hassle because you usually only need a couple of Tbsps at a time. Freezing and storing sofrito in ice-cube-tray-size chunks makes it so much easier.
• To mix things up, sofrito-wise, she says she sometimes substitutes a red and/or yellow bell pepper for the green.