During our visit to Puerto Rico in December 2019/January 2020, we had the chance to record a little video of our trip to Piñones. Piñones, located in the town of Loiza. This spot is fried food central. Below is a short summary but you will definitely enjoy the video and all the delicious pictures of food is much better!
No trip to Puerto Rico is complete without a stop in Piñones, located in the town of Loiza. This spot is fried food central. And as we have said before, we Puerto Ricans LOVE fried food. Here, People have been making home made fritters for generations. You can also hear the sizzling noise of meats grilled outdoors and smell the smoke from the open fire pit that fills your lungs, but the one sight that makes this place so special is the endless rows of glass cases filled with large varieties of fried food, yes lots of fried food!
I could not wait to get my hands into a few of those delicious frituras, but before we got a bite we took some time to meet some wonderful people that were visiting the island. Christmas is a popular time to visit the island - both newcomers and those that have deep roots in the island but for whatever reason can't make Puerto Rico their home anymore.
During the visit, I started by having fresh fruit shake and it was so delicious and refreshing!
Then, we moved on to the "real stuff" - alcapurrias, sorullitos, empanadillas! And we tried a second place, well we had to, you can’t come here and just go to one place, half of the fun is trying out the different places and choosing your favorite things from each of them.
We had the chance to observe them making alcapurrias from scratch and eat one right out of the fryer. The alcapurria dough is very similar to the dough that we used for our pasteles recipe, if you haven’t you should check it out. The main difference is that you prepare pasteles by boiling them, whereas the alcapurrias are fried, who knew that pasteles was the healthy version of alcapurrias!
We made a final stop and here we tried a pincho - the Puerto Rican version of chicken kabobs and some fresh tostones. Oh my! So delicious!
Wow, what a great day. We had so much fun trying out this food. Thank you to all the vendors out there that put up with our camera and lots of questions.
We miss you already, Puerto Rico!!
Check out the video showing you all of this great food HERE.