Recipes from the Heart: Mama’s Recipes that Continue to Keep Our Culture Alive

This Mother’s Day, the Pueblo team wanted to share a familial dish that left our bellies full of memorable food and love.

When life gets complicated, we all have that one special dish we come back to that makes life seem a little bit brighter. For us, these recipes are created and curated by the brave women in our lives — our mamas and abuelas. With a dash of wisdom and a generous serving of love, the recipes we hold so close are the heart of family moments.

From secret ingredients to the comfort of home cooking, here are some of our special recipes that bring our mamas’ and abuelas’ legacies to your dining room table. Happy Mother’s Day!

Diego:

As soon as the snow begins to stick to the ground, the rich smell of my mom’s mouthwatering red pozole flows throughout the whole house. Being something I look forward to every winter, this dish holds fond memories of happiness whenever the cold season hits.

Whether it was for the family holiday party or just a random Sunday dinner, her red pozole was the thing that tied the whole family together as we recounted special moments. Even with a newfound maturity, as the spoon of red liquid reaches my mouth, I find myself reverting to the 8-year-old who loved to help his mom in the kitchen.

With love and light, my mom’s version of this hearty Mexican dish is something I’ll deeply cherish, and I hope you enjoy it as much.

Ingredients:

8 cups of water

2 pounds of pork spine 

1 pound of pork chunks

½ an onion

½ head of garlic

2 teaspoons of salt

8 guajillo chiles

1 large can of hominy (pozole)

Cooking Instructions:

1. Place the meat in the 8 cups of water along with the onion, garlic and salt. Cover the pot and cook for about an hour on high temperature, then lower it to medium for the remaining of the time — or until the meat is tender.

2. Meanwhile, soak the chilies in hot water to rehydrate them, and rinse the hominy.
3. Once the chilies have softened, blend them in a blender with garlic, salt and a bit of the meat broth.
4. Once the meat is thoroughly cooked, add the chili mixture (passing it through a strainer first), followed by the hominy. 
5. My mom personally likes to blend a portion of the hominy kernels to give the broth more body; she adds this back to the pot and lets it simmer for another 25 minutes. Taste to check the salt level and adjust if necessary.
6. Serve accompanied by shredded cabbage, avocado, chopped onion, lime and, if you like, oregano.

Diana:

A food that will always make me excited to come downstairs for dinner are my mom’s tostadas de tinga! My meal is one of my mom’s classic dishes, and it is my all-time favorite. I personally love this meal because it is simple yet so flavorful, but I will say I only really like it when my mom makes it.

 When I’ve tried this food at restaurants or other people’s homes, it’s good, but not amazing like my mom’s. You could say it’s a mother’s touch, but I genuinely believe my mom has the best ingredient lineup for this well-known Mexican dish. This food is savory, crunchy, warm and sure to fill you up. 

Ingredients:

2 large chicken breasts

1 can of chipotle sauce

4 tomatoes

3 Serrano peppers

½ an onion

2 garlic cloves

1 tablespoon of salt 

 ½ cup of oil

3 cups of pinto beans

Sour cream

Green salsa

Tostadas

Cooking instructions:

1. Cook the chicken breasts.
2. Once cooked, season the chicken with salt and garlic and shred.
3. Heat oil in a saucepan and add the finely chopped onion and tomatoes to sauté.
4. Grind chipotle chili sauce and add it to the onion, tomato and finely chopped garlic.
5. Once everything is boiling, add the shredded chicken breasts, season with salt and let it simmer.
6. Separately, fry the beans and mash them so you can spread them well on the tostadas. 
7. Chop lettuce and serve with sour cream and salsa. Enjoy!

Annette:

One of my favorite desserts that my mom makes, especially for the holidays, is arroz con leche. While I love the sweetness of this dessert, I also love the vivid memories I have of the snowy days I spent watching different Christmas movies as I ate this dessert to keep me warm. 

I always leave my mom to make this recipe for the family as I have let the rice stick to the bottom of the pot one too many times. Whether it’s for the holidays or a late-night treat, anytime my mom makes a pot of this dessert, I am one of the first to grab a mug full of it.

Ingredients: 

1 cup of milk (my mom personally uses 2 percent)

1 can of evaporated milk

1 can of condensed milk

3 cups of water

1 ½ cups of rinsed white rice 

2 Cinnamon sticks

(Optional)

Cinnamon powder

Vanilla Extract

Cooking Instructions: 

1. Start by boiling 3 cups of water in a medium pot and adding 2 cinnamon sticks. 

2. Once the water begins to boil, add the rinsed white rice to the pot and cover. Let the rice cook for 15 to 20 minutes at a low heat until there is no liquid. 

3. Next, add the evaporated, condensed and 2 percent milks. Cook over medium-low heat during this step. If you want your arroz con leche to be sweeter, you can also add a tablespoon of vanilla extract. 

4. Afterwards, mix evenly then cover the pot back up to let it simmer for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the recipe starts to slightly thicken. 

5. To avoid my past mistakes, occasionally stir to avoid rice sticking to the pot. 

6. Sprinkle it with cinnamon powder (optional) and enjoy! 

Yodaris:

Every Mother’s Day, my family used to gather at my grandmother’s house and we would all cook one of my favorite Puerto Rican dishes, sancocho. Sancocho is a very popular Caribbean/Latin stew that can be prepared a multitude of ways throughout all the different countries. It’s a well-known dish in places like Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and, of course, Puerto Rico.

Sancocho is a household staple at parties or any other excuse my family comes up with to see each other. This is a hearty, root-filled stew that’s made up of a ton of different vegetables like yuca, yautía, ñame, calabaza, platanos, corn (specifically on the cob) and usually some type of meat, like short rib, but I’ve always had it with beef stew meat.

The prep, in my opinion, is always the worst part of cooking any dish. Since there are so many different roots that need to be added into this stew, not only do you need a gigantic pot, but you also need six more hands just to help cut it all and around two hours to make sure all ingredients simmer perfectly. At the end of the day, that’s what it was all about — being together.

So, in honor of my late grandma, here is my version of her famous sancocho:

1 yuca, washed, peeled and cut into cubes

1 yautía, washed, peeled and cut into cubes

1 malanga, washed, peeled and cut into cubes

1 calabaza, washed, peeled and cut into cubes

2 cobs of corn, broken in half

½ of a large white onion, diced

2 tablespoons of garlic

1 pound of beef stew

½ pound of pork on the bone (ribs, pork chop, etc.)

2 tablespoons of Adobo*

1 tablespoon of oregano*

3 tablespoons of achiote oil

2 tablespoons of Sofrito*

1 box of beef broth

½ can of Goya tomato sauce

2 packets of Sazón

3 bay leaves

2 tablespoons of black pepper & salt to taste*

*Not exact measurements since I eyeball everything until it tastes good … sorry not sorry.

Cooking Instructions:

1. Peel, wash and cut all your veggies into cube shapes — it doesn’t have to be perfect. Set them aside in some water to avoid them turning brown as you sear your meat in the pot.
2. In your very large pot, add your beef stew and achiote oil. Let it sear for 3 minutes on medium heat while stirring occasionally until there’s a nice browning on the meat.
3. With your heat still on medium, add all your seasonings — garlic, salt, adobo, pepper, bay leaves, sazón, white onion, tomato sauce and oregano — and the entire box of beef broth.
4. Bring it all to a boil (raise the heat to high) and let it simmer for 15 minutes or until you start to see it bubble up. 
5. This is when you can start to add all your roots. I think you’re supposed to add them in one by one, but I tend to throw them all in together and it’s never tasted any different to me.
6. After adding the roots, let the stew simmer on medium to low heat for about 50 minutes or until the roots are soft to the touch (with a fork, not your hand).
7. Turn the stove off and let it cool off for five minutes until you serve.
8. Serve with some white rice, bread and avocado to get the full experience.
9. For a vegetarian option (shout out to my auntie), forget the meat entirely and use vegetable stock instead of beef broth. Still very good.

Even though those days with my grandma are behind me, I know her spirit lives on through not only our memories, but through the food we made together. Happy Mother’s Day to all the abuelitas y mamás out there.

Header Image by Alex Carrasquillo