Sancocho: A Very American Concoction

Written by: Alexis Tinsley

“Sancocho to me just means a big hug,” Amelia Bracero says.

Bracero is an Orlando-based food stylist and chef. With both Cuban and Puerto Rican heritage, Bracero became acquainted with both cultures growing up.

“My mother and my grandmother taught me everything I know. They’re incredible cooks. When I make sancocho, I call it my Cubanrican Sancocho, because it comes from a mixture of recipes from my mom and my grandmother,” Bracero says.

When it comes to selecting meats, most people choose whatever is available from local farms. In Latin American regions closer to the sea, locals use fish as the main ingredient in their version of sancocho, while inland versions of sancocho feature chicken and beef.

“After the meat selection,” Bracero instructs, “you grab your vegetables, or as we would say in Spanish, viandas.”

Viandas, in this context, are starchy roots and tubers. In Caribbean Spanish, the term can refer to any ground crops. Examples of these are yucca, plátano, malanga blanca (“dasheen” in English), yautía (taro), boniato (white sweet potato), and carrots.

“I went into my backyard here in Orlando, measured to see where I could make a raised bed, and now I grow my own vegetables,” Bracero recounts.

Adding her own freshly grown vegetables to her cooking makes Bracero’s dishes special. Onions and peppers from her backyard are the foundation of what she serves. “This is where the passion comes from, which is why my sancocho is a huge, warm, big hug, because there is a lot put into everything I make.”

SANCOCHO DOMINICANO, A NATIONAL DISH WITH A TWIN

In the Dominican Republic, sancocho is a national dish associated with celebrations and big milestones in life.

One thing that sets Dominican sancocho apart from that of other countries is the two types of sancocho Dominican culture offers. The first and most popular is sancocho de siete carnes. This type of sancocho is made of seven kinds of meats including beef, goat, sausage, pork belly, chicken, ribs, and ham bones. The other type of sancocho features just three meats: sausage, chicken, and pork belly.

“There are no shortcuts when making Dominican Sancocho. This dish is cooked to sustain you and the entire family,” Cherry Correa says.

Correa is a St. Petersburg-based chef, whose cooking is highly influenced by her combined Puerto Rican and Dominican background.

When it comes to serving sancocho, it is typically served during the season of cooler weather, mainly between the months of November and January in the Caribbean. Sancocho is a hearty dish that keeps the body warm.

Sancocho often marks occasions when the whole family gathers together. “I remember sancocho as the dish that was served on Sunday and prepared by the grandmother of the family,” Correa recalls. “It is an inexpensive dish that can feed many people.”

Dominican sancocho is topped off with a sprinkling of concón, the crispy, flavorful remnants from the bottom of a pan when rice is cooked. In Puerto Rican culture, this is called pega’o.

INGREDIENTS FAR FROM THE ISLAND

“Not having the right ingredients in a cuisine makes or breaks the dish,” says Xiomara Mora-Rivera, a chef from Puerto Rico and the Chapter President for the Tampa Bay Chapter of The American Culinary Federation. “Variations of sancocho exist all over the United States but they do not compare to the traditions of the Island. The lack of ingredients contributes to the contradiction of what sancocho should taste like in every culture.”

Mora-Rivera believes sancocho is different here in the United States due to chefs catering to local taste and a lack of traditional ingredients. She explains that the versions of sancocho created in the United States entail the use of only one meat, limited root vegetables, and lack of flavors. She finds it much easier to make the dish in Puerto Rico where the island is full of the ingredients.

In Puerto Rico, a large pot of sancocho could last her family two days, which, as Correa also noted, made it the perfect, inexpensive dish for a large family on a lower income.

Now that Mora-Rivera is older, she enjoys making sancocho herself. The dish, for her, recalls the happy togetherness of family she experienced as a child. “Using the secrets that my aunt Milagros and grandmother Olga passed down to me is like taking a trip down memory lane.”

THE AMERICAS AS MELTING POT, SALAD BAR, OR SANCOCHO

In its ingredients and its variations, sancocho reflects the broad origins of Latin American peoples. “Melting pot” is an old metaphor for the immigrant origins of the Americas. Sancocho is that melting pot for Latin America, in which origins merge while still retaining distinctive characteristics.

Overall, sancocho displays variations across many countries in the Americas, but its defining features comprise a hearty soup made of meat, broth, starches, and vegetables that can differ depending on the region or even between households. Sancocho’s embrace is wide and strong and comfortably familiar. It embraces various ingredients and, in Central Florida, enables immigrants to turn again and again to that familiar “hug” from their homeland.