Below are the different kinds of food that Puerto Rico has to offer.

Puerto Rican dishes are well seasoned with combinations of flavorful spices. The base of many Puerto Rican main dishes involves sofrito, similar to the mirepoix of French cooking, or the "trinity" of Creole cooking. A proper sofrito is a sauté of freshly ground garlic, tomatoes, onions, recao/culantro, cilantro, cachucha and cubanelle peppers, capers, Spanish manzanilla olives, and small chunks of seasoning smoked ham.
* Albondigón - Puerto Rican meat loaf.
* Alcapurrias - made from a mixture of mainly yautía and may contain ground squash, plantains, green banana and other starchy tropical tubers filled with ground beef or crab meat and deep fried in oil.
* Almojábanas - cheese-flavored rice fritters.
* Arañitas - Fried shredded green plantain, seasoned with salt and garlic.
* Arepas / Domplines - These are fried rounds of flour-based dough. Sometimes they can contain coconut (known as arepas de coco). They are sometimes stuffed with seafood. This dish is particular to the Eastern and Southern parts of Puerto Rico.
* Arroz con gandules -it is a rice-and-pigeon-pea dish seasoned with sofrito, smoked ham, pork meat, chorizo, olives, and red peppers. This is Puerto Rico's national dish.
* Arroz con habichuelas - Literally "rice and beans", this dish is so common that the phrase "rice and beans" means essentially the same as "our daily bread" in northern countries. Dried pink beans are slowly stewed with chunks of ham, potatoes and calabaza (tropical pumpkin) flavored with spices and Recaito base, and then ladled over a mound of rice. Sticky medium-grained rice is more popular in Puerto Rico than long grain rice.
* Arroz con pollo - Chicken with yellow rice. Chicken and rice are cooked in one pot. Basic Arroz con pollo in Puerto Rico is seasoned with sofrito, adobo, olives, capers, paprika, Spanish chorizo and slowly cooked with beer, white wine, stock or water and garnish with sweet peas and carrots
* Bacalaítos - These are fritters made from a pancake-like batter containing codfish, flour, and seasoning.
* Buñuelos - Yam fritters.
* Canoas - Ripe plantain "canoes" stuffed with ground meat and covered with melted cheese.
* Carne Guisada - Puerto Rican beef stew
* Cuajitos en salsa (Buche) - Puerto Rican dish made with pork belly in a red hot sauce
* Empanadas - Breaded steak (beef / turkey / chicken / veal)
* Empanadillas de carne / mariscos / queso / guava - Meat, seafood, cheese, or fruit turnovers usually called "empanadas" in other Spanish-speaking countries. On the eastern side of the island empanadillas are known as pastelillos, although pastelillo also refers to a pastry turnover.
* Escabeche
* Fricasé - Hearty and spicy (chicken / turkey / rabbit or goat) stew with potatoes, beer / white dry wine or red wine, olives, capers, peas & carrots.
* Guanimes - Semi-sweet tamales, wrapped in banana leaves.
* Jibarito - Plantain sandwich (traditionally made with steak or pork).
* Mofongo - Mofongo is a popular dish, made from fried green plantains or fried yuca, seasoned with garlic, olive oil and pork cracklings, then mashed. Mofongo is usually served with a fried meat and a chicken broth soup.
* Mondongo (Menudo) - Pork tripe stew.
* Morcilla - A type of spicy and hot blood sausage.
* Piononos - Fried filled ripe plantain rolls.
* Pollo frito - Puerto Rican style fried chicken
* Rabo encendido - Spicy and hot oxtail stew.
* Salmorejo - Crabmeat stew.
* Sancocho de patitas - Hearty pork feet stew with starchy vegetables, plantains, and Garbanzo beans.
* Sorullos - Fried corn meal logs (much like little tamales), sometimes stuffed with cheese.
* Taquitos - Puerto Rican "Chimichanga".
* Tortilla - Puerto Rican style omelette.
* Seafood - On certain coastal towns of the island, such as Luquillo, Fajardo, and Cabo Rojo, seafood is quite popular, although much of it is imported. Only a tiny number of fishermen ply the waters off Puerto Rico today, and their catch never leaves their seacoast towns. The fact that the island sits next to the deepest part of the Atlantic means there is no wide continental shelf to foster a rich offshore fishery; neither are there any large rivers to dump extra nutrients into the sea that could build up a fish population. Popular seafood include bacalao (codfish), chapín (tropical fish), pulpo (octopus, not always canned), carrucho (conch), camarones (shrimp), langosta (lobster) (most commonly caught in the surrounding waters), and jueyes (crabs).
* Tostones - twice fried plantains originated in the south of Puerto Rico. They are now a popular dish all over Latin America and Caribbean.
* Alcapurrias - made from a mixture of mainly yautía and may contain ground squash, plantains, green banana and other starchy tropical tubers filled with ground beef or crab meat and deep fried in oil.
* Almojábanas - cheese-flavored rice fritters.
* Arañitas - Fried shredded green plantain, seasoned with salt and garlic.
* Arepas / Domplines - These are fried rounds of flour-based dough. Sometimes they can contain coconut (known as arepas de coco). They are sometimes stuffed with seafood. This dish is particular to the Eastern and Southern parts of Puerto Rico.
* Arroz con gandules -it is a rice-and-pigeon-pea dish seasoned with sofrito, smoked ham, pork meat, chorizo, olives, and red peppers. This is Puerto Rico's national dish.
* Arroz con habichuelas - Literally "rice and beans", this dish is so common that the phrase "rice and beans" means essentially the same as "our daily bread" in northern countries. Dried pink beans are slowly stewed with chunks of ham, potatoes and calabaza (tropical pumpkin) flavored with spices and Recaito base, and then ladled over a mound of rice. Sticky medium-grained rice is more popular in Puerto Rico than long grain rice.
* Arroz con pollo - Chicken with yellow rice. Chicken and rice are cooked in one pot. Basic Arroz con pollo in Puerto Rico is seasoned with sofrito, adobo, olives, capers, paprika, Spanish chorizo and slowly cooked with beer, white wine, stock or water and garnish with sweet peas and carrots
* Bacalaítos - These are fritters made from a pancake-like batter containing codfish, flour, and seasoning.
* Buñuelos - Yam fritters.
* Canoas - Ripe plantain "canoes" stuffed with ground meat and covered with melted cheese.
* Carne Guisada - Puerto Rican beef stew
* Cuajitos en salsa (Buche) - Puerto Rican dish made with pork belly in a red hot sauce
* Empanadas - Breaded steak (beef / turkey / chicken / veal)
* Empanadillas de carne / mariscos / queso / guava - Meat, seafood, cheese, or fruit turnovers usually called "empanadas" in other Spanish-speaking countries. On the eastern side of the island empanadillas are known as pastelillos, although pastelillo also refers to a pastry turnover.
* Escabeche
* Fricasé - Hearty and spicy (chicken / turkey / rabbit or goat) stew with potatoes, beer / white dry wine or red wine, olives, capers, peas & carrots.
* Guanimes - Semi-sweet tamales, wrapped in banana leaves.
* Jibarito - Plantain sandwich (traditionally made with steak or pork).
* Mofongo - Mofongo is a popular dish, made from fried green plantains or fried yuca, seasoned with garlic, olive oil and pork cracklings, then mashed. Mofongo is usually served with a fried meat and a chicken broth soup.
* Mondongo (Menudo) - Pork tripe stew.
* Morcilla - A type of spicy and hot blood sausage.
* Piononos - Fried filled ripe plantain rolls.
* Pollo frito - Puerto Rican style fried chicken
* Rabo encendido - Spicy and hot oxtail stew.
* Salmorejo - Crabmeat stew.
* Sancocho de patitas - Hearty pork feet stew with starchy vegetables, plantains, and Garbanzo beans.
* Sorullos - Fried corn meal logs (much like little tamales), sometimes stuffed with cheese.
* Taquitos - Puerto Rican "Chimichanga".
* Tortilla - Puerto Rican style omelette.
* Seafood - On certain coastal towns of the island, such as Luquillo, Fajardo, and Cabo Rojo, seafood is quite popular, although much of it is imported. Only a tiny number of fishermen ply the waters off Puerto Rico today, and their catch never leaves their seacoast towns. The fact that the island sits next to the deepest part of the Atlantic means there is no wide continental shelf to foster a rich offshore fishery; neither are there any large rivers to dump extra nutrients into the sea that could build up a fish population. Popular seafood include bacalao (codfish), chapín (tropical fish), pulpo (octopus, not always canned), carrucho (conch), camarones (shrimp), langosta (lobster) (most commonly caught in the surrounding waters), and jueyes (crabs).
* Tostones - twice fried plantains originated in the south of Puerto Rico. They are now a popular dish all over Latin America and Caribbean.
Holiday dishes
* Arroz con Dulce - Puerto Rican rice pudding. It is notable that in Puerto Rico rice pudding is made with coconut milk and coconut cream as apposed to only bovine milk or cream used elsewhere. Other flavors in to Arroz con Dulce include cloves, ginger, raisins soaked in rum, vanilla, cinnamon, brown or white sugar, heavy cream or milk and sometimes lemon zest.
* Arroz con Gandules - it is a rice-and-pigeon-pea dish. Flavored with annatto oil, olives, capers, smocked ham, sofrito, cumin, bay leaves, stock or broth and slowly cooked with a plantain or banana leaf on top.
* Coquito - A popular Christmastime drink is coquito, an eggnog-like rum and coconut milk-based homemade beverage. The holiday season is also a time that many piñas coladas are prepared, underscoring the combination of pineapples and coconuts seen in Puerto Rican cuisine. [9]
* Ensalada de pulpo - Octupus salad is on some Puerto Rican Christmas tables. The octupus is boiled then cut and toasted in a bowl with black olvies, orégano brujo, garlic, olive oil, cilantro, peppers, red onion, lemon juice and red wine vinegar or white wine vinegar.
* Pasteles - For many Puerto Rican families, the quintessential holiday season dish is pasteles, which English-speakers often literally translate to "pies".
Pasteles are not a sweet pastry or cake, but a soft dough-like mass wrapped in a banana or plantain leaf and boiled. In the center of the dough are choice pieces of chopped meat, shellfish, chicken, raisins, spices, capers, olives, sofrito and often garbanzo beans. Puerto Rican pasteles are similar in shape, size, and cooking technique to Latin American tamales. The dough in a tamal is made from corn meal; while in a Puerto Rican pastel it is made from either green bananas and/or starchy tropical roots. The wrapper in a tamal is a corn shuck or a banana leaf; the wrapper in a Puerto Rican pastel is a banana leaf. Pasteles also use different spices than tamales. The making of pasteles is a labor-intensive social activity. Many family members will get together for hours or days to make dozens to hundreds of pasteles to share with friends and loved ones. Pasteles from the Island are often shipped overseas packed in dry ice during the long Christmas season. They are received as a nostalgic, much treasured gift.
Piña Colada
* Roasted Pork - Pork is central to Puerto Rican holiday cooking, especially the lechón (spit-roasted piglet). Holiday feasts might include several pork dishes, such as pernil (a baked fresh pork shoulder seasoned in adobo mojado), morcilla (a black blood sausage), tripa (tripe), jamón con piña (ham and pineapple), gandinga (stewed pork innards) and chuletas ahumadas (smoked cutlets).
* Stuffed Turkey - From November to January Puerto Ricans enjoy holiday parties and large family dinners almost daily, starting with the Thanksgiving turkey which is seasoned with adobo mojado and stuffed with mofongo or ground beef and/or pork mixture containing almonds, raisins, olives, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, and garlic. Instead of the thin slices seen in the North, a baked turkey in Puerto Rico is often cut into large blocks or chunks to be served on a plate. Rice is a mandatory course in dishes such as Arroz con Gandules (rice with pigeon peas), Arroz con Tocino (rice with bacon), Arroz Mampostea'o, and the sweet dessert Arroz con Dulce (rice pudding).
* Sweets - Sweets are common in Puerto Rican cuisine. During the holidays, the most popular are desserts such as Arroz con Dulce (sweet rice pudding), Budín de Pan (bread pudding), Bienmesabe (little yellow cakes soaked in coconut cream), Brazo Gitano - Puerto Rican style sponge cake with cream and / or fruit filling), Buñuelos de viento - Puerto Rican wind puffs soaked in a vanilla, lemon and sugar syrup), Barriguitas de Vieja (deep-fried sweet pumpkin fritters), Natilla, Tembleque (coconut pudding), Flan (egg custard), Bizcocho de Ron (rum cake), Mantecaditos (Puerto Rican shortbread cookies), Polvorones (a crunchy cookie with a dusty sweet cinnamon exterior), Turrón de Ajónjolí (a toasted sesame seed bar bound together by caramelized brown sugar), Mampostiales (a very thick, gooey candy bar of caramelized brown sugar and coconut chips, challenging to chew and with a strong, almost molasses-like flavor), Dulce de Leche (milk and key lime peelings' caramel pudding), Pastelillos de Guayaba (guava pastries), Besitos de Coco (coconut kisses), Tarta de Guayaba (guava tarts), and Tortitas de Calabaza (pumpkin tarts).
* Arroz con Dulce - Puerto Rican rice pudding. It is notable that in Puerto Rico rice pudding is made with coconut milk and coconut cream as apposed to only bovine milk or cream used elsewhere. Other flavors in to Arroz con Dulce include cloves, ginger, raisins soaked in rum, vanilla, cinnamon, brown or white sugar, heavy cream or milk and sometimes lemon zest.
* Arroz con Gandules - it is a rice-and-pigeon-pea dish. Flavored with annatto oil, olives, capers, smocked ham, sofrito, cumin, bay leaves, stock or broth and slowly cooked with a plantain or banana leaf on top.
* Coquito - A popular Christmastime drink is coquito, an eggnog-like rum and coconut milk-based homemade beverage. The holiday season is also a time that many piñas coladas are prepared, underscoring the combination of pineapples and coconuts seen in Puerto Rican cuisine. [9]
* Ensalada de pulpo - Octupus salad is on some Puerto Rican Christmas tables. The octupus is boiled then cut and toasted in a bowl with black olvies, orégano brujo, garlic, olive oil, cilantro, peppers, red onion, lemon juice and red wine vinegar or white wine vinegar.
* Pasteles - For many Puerto Rican families, the quintessential holiday season dish is pasteles, which English-speakers often literally translate to "pies".
Pasteles are not a sweet pastry or cake, but a soft dough-like mass wrapped in a banana or plantain leaf and boiled. In the center of the dough are choice pieces of chopped meat, shellfish, chicken, raisins, spices, capers, olives, sofrito and often garbanzo beans. Puerto Rican pasteles are similar in shape, size, and cooking technique to Latin American tamales. The dough in a tamal is made from corn meal; while in a Puerto Rican pastel it is made from either green bananas and/or starchy tropical roots. The wrapper in a tamal is a corn shuck or a banana leaf; the wrapper in a Puerto Rican pastel is a banana leaf. Pasteles also use different spices than tamales. The making of pasteles is a labor-intensive social activity. Many family members will get together for hours or days to make dozens to hundreds of pasteles to share with friends and loved ones. Pasteles from the Island are often shipped overseas packed in dry ice during the long Christmas season. They are received as a nostalgic, much treasured gift.
Piña Colada
* Roasted Pork - Pork is central to Puerto Rican holiday cooking, especially the lechón (spit-roasted piglet). Holiday feasts might include several pork dishes, such as pernil (a baked fresh pork shoulder seasoned in adobo mojado), morcilla (a black blood sausage), tripa (tripe), jamón con piña (ham and pineapple), gandinga (stewed pork innards) and chuletas ahumadas (smoked cutlets).
* Stuffed Turkey - From November to January Puerto Ricans enjoy holiday parties and large family dinners almost daily, starting with the Thanksgiving turkey which is seasoned with adobo mojado and stuffed with mofongo or ground beef and/or pork mixture containing almonds, raisins, olives, hard boiled eggs, tomatoes, and garlic. Instead of the thin slices seen in the North, a baked turkey in Puerto Rico is often cut into large blocks or chunks to be served on a plate. Rice is a mandatory course in dishes such as Arroz con Gandules (rice with pigeon peas), Arroz con Tocino (rice with bacon), Arroz Mampostea'o, and the sweet dessert Arroz con Dulce (rice pudding).
* Sweets - Sweets are common in Puerto Rican cuisine. During the holidays, the most popular are desserts such as Arroz con Dulce (sweet rice pudding), Budín de Pan (bread pudding), Bienmesabe (little yellow cakes soaked in coconut cream), Brazo Gitano - Puerto Rican style sponge cake with cream and / or fruit filling), Buñuelos de viento - Puerto Rican wind puffs soaked in a vanilla, lemon and sugar syrup), Barriguitas de Vieja (deep-fried sweet pumpkin fritters), Natilla, Tembleque (coconut pudding), Flan (egg custard), Bizcocho de Ron (rum cake), Mantecaditos (Puerto Rican shortbread cookies), Polvorones (a crunchy cookie with a dusty sweet cinnamon exterior), Turrón de Ajónjolí (a toasted sesame seed bar bound together by caramelized brown sugar), Mampostiales (a very thick, gooey candy bar of caramelized brown sugar and coconut chips, challenging to chew and with a strong, almost molasses-like flavor), Dulce de Leche (milk and key lime peelings' caramel pudding), Pastelillos de Guayaba (guava pastries), Besitos de Coco (coconut kisses), Tarta de Guayaba (guava tarts), and Tortitas de Calabaza (pumpkin tarts).