Puerto Rican pasteles are delicious to eat and a pain in the butt to make. It often takes several people, several hours, and a decent amount of alcohol to make them the traditional way. Back home, with all my family around, we’d form a pasteles assembly line and make a whole party out of it. A couple people work on the filling, and everyone else mans a cheese grater-shredding green bananas, yautia, and pumpkin for the masa.
To me, Christmas tastes like pasteles. So if I’m not with my family in Puerto Rico for the holidays and I have to choose between breaking from the traditional recipe, doing hours of prep by myself, or not eating pasteles at all-you bet your butt I’m breaking out the blender. And if that wasn’t non-traditional enough for ya, your girl also douses them in ketchup. You mad?
This is the exact recipe my family has always used, just without all the manpower. I use a food processor to break down the veggies for the masa, and I assemble the pasteles in silicone cups instead of folding each one in a banana leaf and tying it with twine.
The result is a batch of delicious pasteles that taste just like they always do-like Christmas.
INGREDIENTS
FILLING:
2 lb pork
2 tbsp of sofrito
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tbsp adobo
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1 tbsp sazón
2 tsp chicken bouillon
2 cups of water
Salt and pepper to taste
MASA:
8 very green bananas
3 yautia (taro)
1 cup pumpkin
1 tbsp sazón
1 tbsp adobo
1 tbsp achiote oil
Salt to taste
OPTIONAL
1 banana leaf
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CO-CREATED BY:
Carolina Ginorio & Grant Dougharty