What the HELL is Sofrito?

Hey Foodies!  This month instead of doing the Foodie Fitness Corner, I’m handling the recipe of the month. 

Long story short: I recently had surgery on my leg and I’m limited in activity. So rather than bore you all with my attempts at exercising within my doctor’s limits, I thought I’d put on my chef hat and bad Julia Child’s accent and share my sofrito recipe with you all.

Now I know what you all are thinking, “What the HELL is Sofrito?”

Those of you who have read Bariatric Foodie for a while have seen this ingredient mentioned many times in Nik’s cooking.  Whenever Nik uses this ingredient in her cooking, there are usually a few comments of the blog along the lines of “what is that?” and “where can I purchase that?”  Well, I’m here with a Foodie two-fer — I’m going to break down the basics of Sofrito and then also share with you all how I make my own!   

Those of you that have never heard of sofrito may have heard of its many cousins in other types of cuisine.   For example:

• People in Louisiana might know it as the “holy trinity”
•  In Italian cooking it’s called soffrito
• The French call it mirepoix
• It’s known as refogado in Portuguese, epis in Haitian cuisine and ginisá in Filipino cuisine, and suppengrün in Germany. 

(I bet you didn’t know you were going to get a global culture lesson in there too. Three-fer!)

What all these things have in common is that they are basic cooking bases that are used in each type of cuisine for stews, soups, rice and several other types of dishes.  Sofrito (that Nik uses and what I’m going to show you have to make) just happens to be the Latin/Hispanic/Caribbean version of this cooking base.

While there’s lots of variations on sofrito, generally it consists of garlic, onion and tomatoes and can be cooked in olive oil. From there you can add lots of things based on what you like. Some folks add sweet or hot peppers, herbs (like bay leaves, cumin, thyme and parsley). Sofrito is also a great recipe to use for those veggies and herbs that are “on their way home” (almost spoiled but not quite there yet).

I’m all about limiting food waste, so when I have veggies reaching that point, I whip out my food processor and make some sofrito. It freezes well and it really does give your savory recipes that extra something.

So without further adieu, here’s my sofrito making method in four easy steps:

Step One: Gather your veggies. 

Look at how sad and wilted they seem!  Check out that poor bell pepper…it was on its last leg.  And one of those tomatoes had a bad spot I had to cut out. Not picured here are the two heads of garlic I also used. 

Step Two: Chop! 

Here are my veggies all chopped up and ready to be made into sofrito.

Step Three: Mix it up!  

Throw your veggies into the food processor and pulse a few times until they start to resemble chunky salsa.

Step Four: It’s in the bag! 

Or at least it will be once you put it there.  I portion it out into small Ziploc snack size baggies and then put them all into a freezer bag and toss it into the freezer.  When I’m ready to use it, I grab a bag and toss the whole thing in still frozen. It works great!

Sofrito is a time and money saver. So I encourage you to try your hand at making this great cooking base. If you have any questions, feel free to send them my way at bariatricfoodie@yahoo.com with the subject line "Sofrito." 

Until next month, Foodies!

This month we asked our Foodie News contributors about their guilty pleasures. Hillery's? Nail polish! She reports owning over 300 bottles. From Nik's experience of having hung out with Hillery in person, this reads more like an obsession but...who are we to judge!

Got a fitness (or, apparently, sofrito) question for Hillery? Hit her up at bariatricfoodie@yahoo.com!

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