15/05/2026
“MOLASSES,” MY STORY WITH MOLASSES
In some of my recipes, such as our house BBQ sauce and the marinade for our Caribbean Chicken at La Fogata —when we make it occasionally— I like to add molasses to bring that distinctive sweet, deep, rustic flavor.
For younger generations, molasses is that thick, dark syrup left behind after the sugar cane refining process. It has an intense flavor: sweet, but also with bitter and smoky notes. A flavor with character… a flavor from another time.
It’s interesting how a person’s cooking style ends up being shaped by their upbringing, surroundings, and life experiences. Sometimes we think we cook only with ingredients, but in reality, we also cook with memories.
In my case, I grew up in Aguada during the years when the Coloso Sugar Mill still set the rhythm of life in our town. For the people of Aguada from that generation, Coloso was not simply an industry; it was part of our identity.
Every morning we would wake up to the sound of its steam whistle, which could be heard from every corner of our neighborhoods. Even people who had nothing to do with the sugar cane industry used that sound as the clock of the day. At noon, it would blow again announcing lunchtime… and in the schools, children would automatically walk out of the classroom while the teacher, resigned, repeated: “That’s not the school bell!”
During the first months of the year, when the sugar harvest season began, the entire atmosphere changed. The air became filled with the smell of burned cane and the milling process. Many families would go pick up drums of molasses, the raw material of Puerto Rican rum… the rum of celebrations, the famous cane rum.
And of course, there were also those hidden moonshine stills tucked away along the hillsides. I witnessed that as a young boy. I remember seeing, before dawn, how they distilled that “nectar of the mountains”: molasses, water, firewood, the copper coil, and that entire small handcrafted world operating silently.
The thick, viscous consistency of molasses always fascinated me. Its smell. That sweet yet bitter flavor at the same time… a rough, authentic taste.
My father tells me that my grandfather, Antonio Matías, who was a merchant, used to buy molasses wholesale and then sell it retail to the people. I believe he stored it in what we now know as Sector Villarrubia. And although I never witnessed it directly, from the stories my grandfather used to tell, I have always deduced that he also made cane rum.
I remember hearing him talk about the times when the authorities carried out raids searching for illegal stills in the mountains. They would arrive to destroy them, confiscate them, and fine anyone they found distilling. He told those stories of chases, escapes, and confrontations with an astonishing sense of normalcy, as if speaking about a hard but common reality for many people of that era.
Those who lived through those times know exactly the smell I’m talking about. Even the empty bottles carried that distinctive aroma of cane rum.
For many years, molasses was always associated with rum in my mind. I never imagined it as a culinary ingredient. Yet today it is widely used in cooking, and in some of my signature recipes it holds a special place… perhaps because, without realizing it, it is also part of my story.
And you… were you familiar with molasses?
Fun fact: In Puerto Rico, the expression “¡melaza!” is also used when something turned out really good, when we agree with something, or when something tastes amazing.
