Can Puerto Rican Food Be Vegan?
From a pre-colonial Taino diet of yuca, evolved into the contemporary Puerto Rican diet of double starch with no meat.
Puerto Rican cuisine is just as complex as Puerto Rico itself. For concise purposes, I often describe the cuisine as “double starch and meat.” If there is lasagna on a Puerto Rican plate…there will also be white rice to be eaten with that lasagna. And if that wasn’t enough…don’t forget the platano maduro/amarillos. No, not the Puerto Rican “lasagna” which is the name often given to pastelon and piñon. I mean actual lasagna, with lasagna pasta noodles, eaten with white rice and a side of maduros.
Do you ever eat your Puerto Rican food without meat? Leave me a comment down below.
“There’s a new Puerto Rican vegan/vegetarian food truck in the SF Bay Area. What do you think about that?” was a question I was asked several times, in a few different cities, by attendees while I was on my book tour. They’d ask the question and then search my face with eager eyes, almost expecting a response that would mirror their own. Of course, the only people who ever ask me that question are those who are extremely critical of the possibility. Can Puerto Rican food be vegan/vegetarian?
The answer is…