Review: Arroz con Gandules (Rice with Pigeon Peas) from the Sofrito Project

Ratings - Ease: 4/5, Taste: 4/5, Price: $

Scale: Ease out of 5, with 5 being easy and 1 difficult. Taste out of 5, 5 being delicious and 1 being disgusting. Price out of 5 dollar ($) signs, $ being cheap and $$$ being expensive.

Link to the recipe:

This is a very simple dish, and definitely wasn't the star of the show at my Thanksgiving dinner, but it may have been the one I'm most proud of. Rice and peas can never be incredible, but I feel like these were almost as good as they can get. I've had arroz con gandules a few times, and I always find the rice to be a bit tough, which wasn't really present here (thankfully). As the rice sat in the fridge overnight, it firmed up a bit, but it was still all good.

I followed this recipe pretty closely, except instead of one packet of "Sazón con Achiote (Annatto Seed)" and one packet of "Sazón with Tomato and Cilantro", I used two packets of "Sazón con Achiote y Culantro". These are Latin seasoning packets, by the way. I have no idea how this affected the flavor, but the color came out great, in my opinion. They may be just a bit more orange than you get at the restaurants, but I'm not complaining.

Originally, I made pretty much no change to the recipe. The only thing I did do was after I cooked it. I added some more salt and a bit of hot sauce to the rice, just to amp it up a bit. It wasn't bad at all before, but I like a bit more to my rice dishes, at least if they're going to be a standalone.

This is a 100% recommend for me. It may not blow you away, but it's easy and will produce a solid, quality meal. Can't ask for more than that.

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Krishna Sreenivasan

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