Cuban Spices and Seasonings: Garlic, Cumin, Oregano, Bay Leaf and Bitter Orange

Cuban cooking leans less on a long spice rack than on a few seasonings used generously, garlic above all: one family’s mojo calls for four whole heads. Cumin, oregano and bay leaf round out the list, cooked into a slow sofrito or pounded with bitter orange juice into mojo. That bitter orange gives Cuban mojo its signature tartness, where Canary Island versions use chiles and vinegar instead.

At a glance

Sofrito: the base

Saveur’s recipe for Cuban black beans puts it plainly: the secret of good black beans, and of plenty of other Cuban dishes, is a slow-cooked sofrito of onions or scallions, garlic and green peppers. In that recipe the beans simmer with a bay leaf and a sprig of fresh oregano. The sofrito cooks in olive oil with a tablespoon of ground cumin, a dozen scallions, eight cloves of garlic and a green bell pepper, then goes into the pot.¹

Mojo: garlic, citrus, cumin and oregano

Mojo is a garlic-and-citrus sauce that works as a marinade and as a sauce at the table. Here are two named recipes side by side. Neither one is “the” recipe.

Presilla, a culinary historian and chef, notes that Cuban mojo gets its signature tartness from bitter orange juice. Canary Island versions use chiles and vinegar instead.² Following tradition, she pounds the garlic and salt to a paste in a mortar before adding the liquids.

Garlic

Cuban cooks don’t hold back: eight cloves in Saveur’s black beans,¹ ten in Presilla’s mojo² and four whole heads in the Garcia family’s mojo,³ all fresh. Garlic powder works in a pinch, but it tastes different. See garlic, garlic powder vs. garlic and too much garlic.

Cumin

Cumin is especially popular in Asian, North African and Latin American cuisines. In Cuban cooking it goes into the black-bean sofrito and into mojo. Cooks use it in picadillo too. You’ll sometimes read that some Cuban picadillo is made with Jamaican curry powder; we couldn’t find a source for that. See cumin, cumin uses and too much cumin.

Oregano

Oregano is in both mojo recipes above and in the black beans. It’s a key ingredient in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines, and its leaves contain thymol and carvacrol. There’s a widely repeated claim that Cuba’s isolation made it a pioneer in oregano farming. No source we found backs it up. See oregano, oregano uses and fresh vs. dried oregano.

Bay leaf

Bay laurel is a Mediterranean tree. Its leaves go into slow-cooked Cuban beans and some mojo recipes. Cooks also add it to ropa vieja, picadillo and stews. See bay leaves and cooking with bay leaves.

Vinegar and citrus

In Cuban mojo, the acid is bitter orange juice, not vinegar. You may read that Cuba prizes vinegar more than anywhere else in Latin America, or that its usual vinegar is distilled from sugar cane. We found no source for either. See too much vinegar if a dish has gone too sour.

Olive oil

Olive oil is the fat in Presilla’s mojo and in the black-bean sofrito. Another common claim, that Cuban cooks save olive oil for flavor and fry mostly in vegetable oil, didn’t turn up in any source we checked.

Chiles

None of the recipes above uses chile. Katzer lists the habanero among the best-known Capsicum chinense types and associates it with Cuba and Yucatán.⁴ See habanero powder.

Related pages

• Caribbean spices, Spanish spices and Haitian spices
• Adobo seasoning and sazón
• Culantro
• The master list of herbs and spices