In his book, “The Joy of Eating: Food and Identity in Contemporary Cuba,” Christian Paponnet-Cantat describes how food is central to the Cuban way of life.
The socio-cultural events that arose due to the power and identity struggles have, to a large extent, shaped the Cuban cuisine as well.
It is important not just to know their recipes but also to understand its food history to better understand Cuban food.
Cuban food is influenced by its history. The Spanish colonization, the arrival of African slaves, and the neighboring Caribbean countries have shaped the Cuban cuisine over the years. Arroz con pollo, Ropa vieja, and Picadillo are some of the famous traditional dishes of Cuba.
The Spanish colonization and the African slaves brought in their spices and techniques, which soon began to be incorporated in the Cuban cuisine.
A little bit of Chinese influence is also seen in Cuban cooking in Havana, Cuba.
Keep on reading to find out more about how the world political order influenced some of Cuba’s best dishes.
Traditional Cuban Food Consists of Rice and Beans
Cuba is a relatively small country in terms of the area of land and the geographical regions it spans over.
The whole country enjoys a tropical climate throughout the year.
Nevertheless, even for this relatively small country with a single climate, Cuba’s culinary variety is rich and abundant.
The country uses fresh ingredients for cooking, and primary among them is rice and beans.
There are a lot of Cuban dishes whose base is made of these two staples.
In the past, and some would say even today, Cuba has witnessed many socio-political changes that directly impacted its food.
The rationing system and state-run socialistic eateries have only made Cubans more creative with their cuisine.
For instance, in the eastern part of Cuba, the use of honey, chocolate, and annatto seeds are heavily borrowed from the neighboring Caribbean countries and the African eating habits.
Cuban food mostly uses fresh ingredients as they grow in abundance in the tropical climate. Traditional stews and soups, and sandwiches use a lot of these fresh ingredients.
Some of these foods also contain meat that is roasted until it is tender.
Spices, too, are quite popular in Cuba. Apart from onions and garlic, other spices such as bay leaves, coriander, cumin, and pepper are also used.
Spanish Influence in Cuban Cuisine
Cuba was the first country in the Caribbean to be colonized and the last to gain its freedom from the Spanish colonization.
Due to this, Cuban food, along with many other Cuban traditions and lifestyle choices, have very deep-rooted ties with Spanish cuisine as more and more Spanish people and their eating habits got merged with that of Cuba.
During the colonial era, parts of Cuba also emerged as important trading ports. Spanish immigrants passed through Havana before they moved onto other cities within Cuba.
Havana was, in fact, one of the most important trading ports in Cuba. As the Spanish began to immigrate into the country, they brought with them cattle and pigs and their own spices.
Due to this, many Cuban dishes today have their origin in Andalucia.
African Influence in Cuban Cuisine
Many interesting food ingredients such as the Guinea chicken, malanga, and plantain came to Cuba when the African slaves were brought into the colony.
This led to the introduction of many African influenced Cuban dishes like the fufú, funche, and tostones.
Cubans also adopted the practice of eating rice with other foods, including curries, sauce, and fries.
Rice gradually became a staple and began to be used as a common accompaniment to many other Cuban dishes as a direct influence of the arrival of African slaves to Cuba’s ports.
Plantains, too, were the result of this same event, and today, these starchy bananas are cooked as a snack and served as a traditional side dish in many Cuban dishes.
Castro’s Cuba
Fidel Castro was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976. He also served as the President of Cuba from 1976 to 2008.
The Cuban revolution and the breakdown of U.S. relations are part of his tumultuous legacy, and its widely felt impact was seen in Cuban food as well.
The events during his oppressive tenure in office had a profound impact on Cuban cuisine.
After severing ties with other countries, Cuba’s import was impacted grossly, and Cubans had to find other sources to keep the economy running.
During the Cold War, as U.S. policies did not allow trade with Cuba, this Caribbean island nation morphed its diet to accommodate a food culture that had to make do with what was available.
As Cuba became a Communist country and strengthened its ties with the Soviet Union, new food products replaced the old.
Wheat and yogurt were brought into the country while pork replaced chicken, and beef completely disappeared. In Cuba, it would be rare to find American influence on their food.
However, in American Cuban immigrant communities settled in Miami and other places, American influences in Cuban food is quite common.
Changing Food Customs in Cuban Diaspora
Food is often used to construct the national identities of nations. The impact that the Cuban diaspora has on its cuisine and food practices is huge.
Food customs and traditions are often shaped after an exodus or migration, and the food practices are reconfigured accordingly to accommodate the changing times.
Diaspora is one such event that greatly reshapes the food culture and practices of a region.
Cubans, who became emigrants, dismissed previously learned Cuban food ideas and adopted a new food culture that reflected the food available in the new places.
In many ways, Cuban food got reconfigured over time as the diaspora happened.
Food Security and Cuban Socialism
Agrarian reforms in the 1990s had a major impact on Cuba’s urban landscape.
The government granted land rights and sanctioned agricultural markets at the time leading to urban agriculture that helped with providing food and income for many urban residents.
Urban landscaping and agriculture quickly went on to become one of the largest employment sectors in that time.
New agriculture models in Cuba heavily rely on sustainable and organic methods.
All spare land, both in urban and rural Cuba, is being used for agriculture, so that abandoned parking lots are also used for cultivation.
It does not matter whether these shifts were made primarily by pure necessity or to bring in a new approach to farming itself in our urban worlds.
It does help remove the dependency on fossil fuel for the transport of food.
Even though today, Cuba is still heavily dependent on imported food, a large part of this dependency is now eradicated due to the new and improved national food production.
With less than 2% of its population considered undernourished, Cuba has also met the Millennium Development and World Food Summit Goals for 2015.
Food Sovereignty
Today’s world is plagued with heavy price fluctuations and the constant threat of climate change that looms large over the world. Add to this the rising costs of fossil fuels and fertilizers.
All these factors have caused a lot of volatility in crop prices.
It has been made almost impossible for most of the world’s smallholder farmers to have a smallholding to continue managing their pieces of farming smallhold lands due to these reasons, and the agroecosystems are in dire need of an upgrade.
Rural social movements, such as the Food Sovereignty movement led by La Vía Campesina, provide an opportunity to acknowledge and address these agroecosystems’ vulnerability.
Today, Cuba is in a position to be one of those few countries that can implement food sovereignty so that it will, which will, in turn, help minimize the threats posed by global food price fluctuations and help the nation strive towards a more secure agrarian country.
Cuba has experienced in the span of just one year, in 2008, three devastating catastrophic hurricanes in the span of a single year in 2008.
These extreme climatic changes are not at all conducive for crops, and food sovereignty needs to be something that other nations, along with Cuba, need to commit to continuing to keep their food culture alive wholeheartedly.
The researchers at the Universidad Central de Las Villas (UCLV) in Villa Clara Province, Cuba, are trying new methods in developing methods for a new and effective way for the practical implementation of food sovereignty by increasing awareness of smallholder farmers and designing and managing food security models at the national level.
The Food Staples of Cuba
The tropical climate in Cuba encourages the growth of many fruits and root vegetables.
Malanga, potatoes, bananas, yucca, and plantain are incorporated in many Cuban dishes today. Seafood is also abundant in this island nation.
A trace of Chinese influence is also seen in the amount of rice cultivation in Cuba today.
Rice was first brought into Cuba by the Chinese and is a staple food of Cuba today.
Chinese immigrants also brought in the La Caja China (roughly translates to the Chinese box). It is a contraption that the Chinese used to cook their meals in.
They carried all their wares in a wooden box and made meals on these makeshift wooden boxes complete with fire source provision.
Today La Caja China is used in many Cuban festivals to make slow-roasted pork.
Some of the food staples such as Moros y Cristianos (black beans with rice) and the Pollo en salsa, chicken in sauce, are commonly used in the Cuban diet today.
Tostones is another common food staple in Cuba that is made of flattened green plantains that is deep-fried. This is a remnant of the African influence in Cuban cuisine.
Conclusion
It is a well-known fact that the best way to get into the heart of any culture is through its cuisine.
Cuban cuisine evolved with each new chapter in its history.
The colonization of Cuba by Spain and the African slaves have all contributed to the way Cuban food has evolved.
The tropical climate leads to an abundance of fruits and vegetables.
While the cuisine mainly consists of rice and beans, Cuban cuisine has long since made its foray into other dishes, which have now become part of its culture and are largely considered traditional Cuban food.
And of course, at the heart of the Cuban culture is the famous Cuban coffee and its many delicious desserts, especially flan!
Join the debate! What’s better, the Cuban Sandwich or the Medianoche? I guess first things first. Cuban Sandwich vs. Medianoche, What’s the Difference?
Sources
- JSTOR: The Joy of Eating: Food and Identity in Contemporary Cuba
- Wikipedia: History of Cuba
- How Stuff Works: How Cuban Traditions Work – Traditional Cuban Food
- The Spruce Eats: History and Staples of Cuban Cuisine
- Miami Culinary Tours: Cuban Cuisine; A Result Of The Fusion Of Spanish, African And Aboriginal Customs
- Revolución de Cuba: The Roots of Cuban Cuisine
- Tandfonline: We Are What We Now Eat: Food and Identity in the Cuban Diaspora
- Research Gate: Food Security in Cuba
- Tandfonline: Agroecology and the Development of Indicators of Food Sovereignty in Cuban Food Systems
- Wikipedia: Cuban Cuisine
- A Sassy Spoon: Classic Cuban-Style Arroz con Pollo
- BonAppetit: Ropa Vieja
- All Recipes: Classic Cuban-Style Picadillo
- A Sassy Spoon: 3-Ingredient Tostones Recipe
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Jorge Garcia is the founder of AmigoFoods, where he has spent over 20 years helping readers discover authentic Latin American and Spanish cuisine. Raised in a Cuban-American household, Jorge learned to cook at the hands of his mother and grandmother, carrying forward generations of family recipes. That heritage, backed by his family’s four-generation history in the Latin food industry, inspired him to launch AmigoFoods in 2003. With more than 1,000 published articles on recipes, ingredients, and food culture, Jorge’s mission is simple: make authentic Latin cooking approachable for home cooks everywhere while honoring the traditions behind every dish.