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Fajardo.- Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. They can be eaten on their own, or stuffed. What’s the first thing that comes to mind? If you are from Fajardo, you surely know about arepas, a very well-known and acclaimed delicacy in eastern Puerto Rico. And if there’s anyone who knows how to prepare this recipe in the “Ciudad Caridura” by heart, it’s Justino Cruz Figueroa, better known as “Poty,” who has sold arepas to other business owners on the island for 32 years, aside from selling them in his very own Racar Seafood restaurant, in Las Croabas.

“(The arepa) is one of our most popular dishes, it’s what I pay the most attention to, as well as the pastelillos (turnovers). We sell them to anyone. There’s a man who comes all the way from central Puerto Rico to buy them and take them home with him, and there’s a girl from a nearby business that buys the coconut ones,” explained Poty, who assured that anyone who visits Las Croabas cannot leave without eating some good arepas, and affirmed that they go well with anything.

“Everyone who comes to Fajardo orders arepas with fish, with conch, with octopus, shrimp, cod, coffee, with beans... I’ve seen people that sprinkle some sugar on top of them,” said the cook, who assured that there is no preference between coconut arepas and regular ones, since he assures that “both sell well.”

“Somos Puerto Rico” went to Racar Seafood’s kitchen to learn about the process. There we met Mary Gómez, who is in charge of making the nearly two thousand arepas that are sold weekly.

With their work cut out for them, the employee and her helper stopped their production of pastelillos to show us the process. Gómez began gathering the ingredients: seasoned water (salted water), flour, lard, butter, salt, and sugar. If it’s coconut arepas, coconut milk is added. In this case, they were preparing regular arepa dough, which makes from 25 to 30 arepas.

Like a master chef, Gómez put the ingredients into a huge mixer, since her experienced eye and knowledge can tell what’s missing.

“The water is seasoned with salt; you have to be somewhat heavy-handed with it, around 5 pounds of flour, half a cup of sugar, about half a teaspoon of butter, and a cup of lard. We pour it into the mixer and then we knead it; we then put the dough in covered containers, we let it rest for a while, and then we take it to the machine where we cut it,” she explained.

Once the large dough rests for an hour, it is placed on a scale to know how many arepas can come out of it, so that they all weigh the same. “It is weighed so that when it is chopped, it all comes out the same size. The dough should weigh approximately 7 pounds to make about 25 arepas,” Poty clarified.

Once weighed, the dough is put in a machine, where it is chopped into balls of the same size. “Many people don’t do it like this, they just take the amount and knead it, but we chop them so that they are all the same size. That machine rolls it into a ball, and then you have to let the dough rest again,” Poty commented. After the second rest, these balls are each passed through a mechanical roller that flattens the dough and gives the arepas their final shape.

“In the past, this process of flattening the dough was made by hand with a roller. But we use this machine to facilitate production,” said the owner of the restaurant, who stressed that, throughout the arepa’s preparation process, “it is also very important to add flour so that the dough doesn’t stick.” From that workspace, the round flour doughs, some of them butter flavored (regular) and others with the sweet flavor of coconut, are deep-fried in hot oil and then end up decorating the restaurant’s display case with their beautiful golden color.