Puerto Rican sofrito is easy to make at home! Vegetables and herbs are blended together to form the base for many Puerto Rican dishes. This is why Puerto Rican cuisine is so flavorful!

Puerto Rican Sofrito

In this post I’m going to show you how to make sofrito.

This is the foundation for many recipes like the popular Puerto Rican habichuelas, mom’s famous Puerto Rican rice, ground beef picadillo (which is used as an empanada filling) and many more.

I like to think of it as a Puerto-Rican style pesto. Except I wouldn’t eat this raw! It’s always cooked.

So I guess it is more similar to the French mirepoix, which consists of onions, carrots and celery, or the Cajun “holy trinity” of onions, celery and bell pepper.

What does sofrito have in it?

Traditionally you need bell peppers, onion, aji dulce peppers, garlic, cilantro and recao.

This Puerto Rican sofrito recipe consists of (mostly) easy-to-find ingredients.

However, I’ll talk about what to do when you can’t find a certain ingredient.

Bell peppers, onion, garlic and cilantro are all common ingredients for me to find.

It has become increasingly difficult to find recao and nearly impossible to get aji dulce peppers.

I will be ordering some seeds to grow my own, but I know this isn’t a possibility for everyone.

Recao also goes by the name culantro, long coriander and a variety of other titles.

It can be found in Hispanic and Asian markets. Asian stores may call it sawtooth coriander.

It is extremely fragrant and smells similar to cilantro, but deeper.

If you cannot find recao, increase the cilantro to two bunches.

Aji dulce are a small Caribbean pepper about the size of a habanero.

They are not spicy at all, but slightly sweet.

If you can’t find them, make the sofrito without them or substitute one red bell pepper or cubanelle pepper.

Just note that using a red pepper may change the color of the sofrito, but that’s ok.

Can I use recaito instead of sofrito?

Yes, recaito can be used instead of sofrito.

If you are buying pre-made from the store you will notice that recaito is a green, cilantro based puree and sofrito is a red puree due to the addition of tomato sauce. 

Puerto Rican sofrito is typically green and we add the tomato sauce later when using the sofrito in a recipe.

This recipe will make approximately 4-6 cups of sofrito.

Usually you only need about 2 tablespoons of sofrito per recipe.

You can certainly par this recipe down, but I like to make a big batch while I have the ingredients and freeze it in ice cube trays for later use.

Each cube is about 1 tablespoon, and there’s no need to thaw before using.

Just throw it in the recipe when it calls for sofrito.

Store the sofrito cubes in a freezer bag to prevent freezer burn and they should stay fresh for some time.

If you’ve never tried cooking with sofrito before, I highly recommend starting with my Puerto Rican Rice and Beans.

It is the most popular recipe on the blog…BY FAR. One bite and you’ll know why!

Watch the video below to see how sofrito is used in a recipe.