Go to the Recipe: Mariscos Sazón (Seafood Seasoning Blend)
I love these chefsteps pantry staples. My relatives refuse to use any bullion cubes if they aren't the ones I made per the site's recipe. That said. Why is every other ingredient, except "Goya," is generic? Do you get a kickback? I understand Velveeta or what not, versus the melting salts, but achiote and cilantro (presumably msg?) is too much for a site that requires the most obscure ingredients imaginable.
With a contributor recipe like this one, we stick with what the chef has for their own recipe so that it is accurate to their style. It is not a recipe that we personally put development into, and if it was we would have made our own.
The Goya product has Culantro not Cilantro. Cilantro (Coriandrum sativum) and Culantro (Eryngium foetidum) are different but related plants. Culantro is much stronger in flavor and difficult to find in the US either fresh or dried. The Goya product is probably the easiest way to get the Culantro flavor into the spice blend. I have a friend who lived for 30+ years in Puerto Rico. There culantro is a common ingredient and essential for Puerto Rican sofrito.
Hi Keith,
We call for that specific Goya product because it works as a flavor building block in the mariscos sazón, lending it a specific flavor profile and appearance, while also keeping the ingredient list for the spice blend manageable.
Much like our Ranch Chicken recipe, which calls for packets of Hidden Valley, or Hainanese Chicken Rice, which calls for Totole chicken bouillon, our chefs develop recipes with specific flavor profiles in mind, and sometimes that means using store-bought seasonings.
This recipe isn't sponsored by Goya, if that's what you mean by the kickback, but as with all our shoppable links, we may receive a small amount through affiliate revenue, if we have have an affiliate relationship with the site.
Hope that helps!
I lived in Panama and learned to love culantro there. I have not seen it locally (Virginia) in any Latin markets, but they do have it at several Asian markets, particularly those that carry a lot of Vietnamese ingredients. It is called ngò gai in Vietnam.
