Pasteles, Puerto Rican Meat Pies using cuisinart food processor

Makes about 15-20. Boil 1 hour.

It consists of 4 parts, Achiote(Annato) oil, the sofrito and meat mixture, then the masa (dough) and is a 2 day process.

Achiote Oil

Cook in saucepan on low to medium heat until Achiote seeds color the oil. Then let cool. Watch closely and stir. Use metal. Stains a lot.

• 1/2 c Achiote/Annato seeds
• 1 c oil

Sofrito

Grind in food processor then cook until it stops tasting raw and sharp.

• 1 onion

Then grind in food processor, add to cooked onion, and cook until soft and no longer tastes raw.

• Green pepper
• 1-3 Garlic cloves
• 5-10 sprigs cilantro

Mix into sofrito

• about 1 T fresh squeezed lemon juice to brighten it.

Meat Mixture

Cut in about 1/2 inch cubes

• 1.5 - 2 lbs pork loin or roast (If using roast can fry fat and add back for more flavor)

Sear in achiote oil to brown, then cover with water and cook until tender

Then add

• Sofrito
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste (Optional)

Then let sit in fridge overnight for the flavors to blend

NEXT DAY

Sharpen your food processor blades if they are not sharp. It takes forever to grind with duller blades.

Start heating water in big kettle to boil pasteles in.

Masa

Add to food processor in this order. Visually, the green bananas, plantains, and yautia look to be about the same volume. It goes unsaid that you need to peel everything which can be a bit of work. Mixture grinds best if you make cube-like pieces about 1/2 inch. Slices sometimes don't grind.

• 2 green bananas (guineo verde, not yellow bananas that are green) 
• 2 plantains (Green)
• Small piece, about 2 T, squash (Softens masa. Some people use potato)
• 1.5 lbs yautia (Makes everything stick together. Malanga does not work.)
• about 1 T achiote oil over the yautia so yautia doesn't make food processor stop
• Enough milk, water, or broth from meat mixture so that mixture grinds and turns into a thick, spreadable paste that is more spreadable than cookie dough.

Set up your pastele making station. I generally use our kitchen table since we make a lot at one time.

Put in center of table

• Achiote oil for oiling foil
• Masa
• Meat Mixture
• Sliced green olives with pimiento in center

Put along edges

• about 12 inch by 12 inch pieces of foil. (Traditionally were wrapped in banana leaves. If you want to you can put a piece of banana leaf on foil for flavor. Perhaps could wrap in parchment paper with string if you want. I have never tried that.)

Building the Pasteles

• Put the following on the Aluminum Foil
• Oil foil with Achiote Oil
• Spread a rectangle of Masa about 2 inches from edges of foil
• On 1/2 of the Masa, spoon on meat mixture, and add
• 1 -2 olive halves

Folding the foil

• Fold foil in half
• Then fold over edges 2-3 times to make water-tight packet

Boiling Pastels

• Carefully put foil packets in boiling water and boil for about 1 hour. We usually stuff them in vertically and then turn them at about 1/2 hour.
• Take out and let cool. They are too soft if you try to eat them when they first come out. The dough sets up once they cool.

Pictures

We make about quadruple this recipe so we have to grind the masa in batches and then mix the batches together.

I learned this recipe from a friend about 40 years or so ago and have been making it for my husband's birthday ever since.

When I went to make it this year I had to recreate this recipe from memory because I think my online recipe was too old and it got deleted/archived from my blog. We usually make 4 times this recipe and freeze the pasteles in their foil packets. Then when we want to eat them we run the packet under running water which makes the foil peel off easily, and put the frozen pastele on a plate covered with another plate to heat in microwave.