Improving Your Cooking Skills: Soffritto/Sofrito

I’ve recently been experimenting with ways to add additional flavor to various dishes such as soups, pasta and sauces (so that covers just about everything) so I returned back to my native soffritto which simply means a mix of aromatic, finely chopped vegetables and herbs gently sautéed in olive oil and added to many dishes for intense flavor. In many parts of Italy a basic soffritto consists of onions, carrots and celery. In the Italian kitchen of my youth, soffritto was usually a sauté of chopped onions and crushed red pepper flakes in olive oil, used to start a dish but sometimes a version of this was added at the end. One of my favorite was dried red chile peppers broken randomly in small chunks and sautéed gently for about 45 seconds in olive oil, seasoned with salt and drizzled on top of a simple pasta with tomato sauce. I can’t tell you what an amazing difference this addition made--bringing a good dish to the sublime.

Little did I know however that many cultures have their own versions of soffritto (or sofrito as it’s spelled in Latin cuisines) and though each uses finely chopped vegetables and herbs, the variations are endless, yet the purpose (to add intense flavor) and results are all similar.

One of my favorite--because of it’s versatility--is a Latin sofrito that in prepared in a food processor and then can be frozen in ice cube trays or air tight containers, ready to use all winter long. My version was a Mediterranean mix of Vidalia onions. garlic. jalapeno, chile and cubanello peppers, tomato and fresh parsley.


I placed one of each vegetable in the bowl of my food processor and pulsated until all were finely chopped. I stored the mix in a plastic container in the refrigerator and have used it almost every day since. I sautéed a few spoonfuls in some olive oil and added it to a 16 bean soup. I pan seared a skillet steak and rubbed a bit on each side of the meat a minute before taking it off the fire and it mixed in with the meat juices to make a delicious sauce. I also of course drizzled some over my linguine.