Domestic Gourmet Brings Scratch-Made Latin Flavor to 2026 Holiday Gift Guides

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Domestic Gourmet, founded by Ciji Castro, a first-generation Cuban-American and Puerto Rican executive chef, is presenting its 2026 holiday collection for gift guide consideration. Every product is made from scratch, in small batches, with 100% organic ingredients, and the collection is built around the flavors of a Cuban and Puerto Rican family kitchen.

The holiday collection:
Pasteles Edition Box — $73.79. Everything a family needs for a pasteles-making day: annatto oil, adobo, sazón, pasteles wrapping paper, and cotton butcher's twine, bundled for the Puerto Rican Christmas tradition.
Queen of Nochebuena Gift Box — $64.99. The brand's holiday gift box: annatto oil, adobo, and sazón
Organic Annatto Oil (Aceite de Achiote) — $29.95. A ready-to-use deep orangey-red oil made with just two ingredients — organic high-oleic sunflower oil and organic annatto seeds — for the warm color and earthy flavor essential to rice, sofrito, beans, and stews. 12 fl oz.
Organic Adobo & Sazón Duo — $25. The under-$30 pantry gift: a savory all-purpose adobo (5 oz) and an annatto-first sazón (2 oz), made to be used together.

"Flavor is memories," said Castro. "I built Domestic Gourmet so anyone, anywhere, can cook and have their food taste like it's made from scratch, no matter how quickly dinner needs to get on the table."

Built for gift guide production: Samples are available on confirmed request, with high-resolution product and lifestyle images ready to share. Affiliate links are provided through the Domestic Gourmet Amazon store, compatible with editors' standard Amazon Associates tracking. Domestic Gourmet ships nationwide, including Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the holiday order cutoff is December 15. Products are also available at shop.domesticgourmet.com.

Also available is a story, not just a product: For feature coverage, Castro is "The Keeper of the Pasteles." In her family, the art of making pasteles for Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) is passed down through verbal instructions mixed with constructive criticism, as family stories are being retold. Her husband's Titi Lucy taught her the ancestral dish and how days of work turn into core memories and a way to pass down family history. A descendant of Taíno, African, and Spanish roots, making pasteles was once communal work, with many hands in the kitchen; those days are gone in Castro's family, and the tradition was slipping away even within her own generation.

So she documented the complete method in a step-by-step tutorial, created with Walk-In Talk Media and Ibis Images, published in English and Spanish, and adapted for kitchens with only one cook. It's an archive the next generation can actually use.

"When ancestral cooking methods are primarily passed down orally, they can be lost to the next generation," said Castro. "I felt compelled to preserve it for my children and for those of us in the diaspora who miss the taste of home, the taste of Nochebuena."

Castro is available for interviews and demonstrations, and the full visual archive is available to editors: https://www.domesticgourmet.com/how-to-make-puerto-rican-pasteles/

About Domestic Gourmet:
Ciji Castro, a first-generation Cuban-American and Puerto Rican executive chef, founded Domestic Gourmet. The brand makes small-batch adobo, sazón, and annatto oil from scratch using fresh organic produce, and builds gift boxes around the dishes she grew up with... including everything needed for a pasteles-making day. Domestic Gourmet has been seen in Forbes, Southern Living, Tampa Magazine, Centro Tampa Bay, and on NBC's WFLA Daytime, The CW, Telemundo, and NPR's WUSF The Zest.