Cuban Cooking Made Easy
When I shared our Cuban family recipes for Fricase de Pollo (chicken fricassee) and Arroz Amarillo con Pollo (yellow rice with chicken) a common question was, “What is Bijol (pronounced Bee-hol) seasoning?” When my Cuban mother-in-law started teaching me how to make Cuban food over 25 years ago, I asked her the same question. Bijol …
Mojo Criollo (pronounced mo-ho kree-oyo) is a Cuban marinade consisting of naranja agria, garlic, olive oil, limes, and spices. Mojo Criollo can be used to marinate just about anything. Pork, Lechon, chicken, shrimp and even yucca and potatoes are the perfect marrying of ingredients. It can also be used as a dipping sauce for yuca …
I was probably about 19 years old the first time I ever ate malanga. It was so different from anything else, but it quickly became one of my favorite foods! When I met my Cuban husband and started eating meals with his family, sometimes I didn’t even know what I was eating. However, I always …
Yuca, pronounced Yoo-ka, is a starchy tuberous root also commonly known as cassava. However, yuca is not the same thing as yucca. I see many recipes and articles interchanging the two. Yucca is a shrub with white flowers that grows in dry climates. Yuca is a tubular root vegetable like a potato. It grows in …
I use garlic almost everyday. Garlic is a staple in Cuban cooking. Every recipe calls for it and even when it doesn’t I’ll add it anyway! Most of the time, I add the garlic where it’s called for and everything turns out great. But… sometimes when I am making a garlic mojo sauce the garlic …
Espresso is mixed with hot water and sugar to make Cuban coffee, or cafe cubano. The ultimate product is an espresso coffee with a syrupy caramelized body and a high concentration of caffeine.
If you are new to Cuban cooking you might have noticed many recipes contain the ingredient naranja agria. If you do not know what that is then you are probably asking yourself, what is naranja agria? Naranja agria is spanish for bitter or sour orange in english. It is also known as Seville orange. Naranja …
