Taste Cuba
Sofrito, shredded beef and a rice that knows black beans. Cuban cooking is Spanish technique, African deep flavour, and island citrus, cooked slowly because the meat requires it.
Ropa vieja is flank or brisket braised until it shreds into tomato, pepper, onion and cumin — 'old clothes' as a visual, not a joke about leftovers, though leftovers are how it often starts. Congrí or moros y cristianos is rice-and-beans; tostones are smashed fried plantain; mojo is garlic-citrus on pork. Havana's Spanish-leaning cooking and eastern Cuba's stronger African and Haitian traces do not taste identical. A medianoche is a sweetish pressed sandwich; it is not a Miami invention even if Miami kept it famous. The braise should stain the rice.
7 recipes · 1 cuisine
Essential dishes
Checking your allergy settings…
More dishes
Further Cuba listings, including shorter editorial recipes and imported methods.
Checking your allergy settings…
Regional cuisines
Think you know Cuba food?
7 quiz dishes. Optional — Passport stamps still come from cooking.
Take the Cuba food quizFood history
Taíno maize and casabe, Spanish sofrito and beef, West African plantain and deep frying, Chinese contract labour in the cane fields. Ropa vieja has Iberian cousins; the Cuban pepper-and-cumin version is island cooking. The revolution, rationing and the diaspora in Florida split the kitchen without ending it. Home cooks still start with onion, garlic and pepper in fat. Honesty means African technique in the fryer and the bean pot, Spanish names on the braise, and a citrus mojo that is Cuban rather than generic Caribbean barbecue.