Sofrito peppers, celery can replace onions, and parsley or culantro can be used in place of cilantro. In Ecuadorian cuisine, sofrito is called "refrito", and it is made of Spanish onions, cubanelle peppers, fresh tomatoes, roasted garlic, cilantro, and ground toasted cumin. In the Mexican state of Yucatán, habanero chiles are essential to the local variation of sofrito. In Puerto Rican cuisine, sofrito is mostly used when cooking rice dishes, sauces, and soups. Sofrito is closely related to "recaíto". The two main ingredients that give Puerto Rican sofrito its characteristic flavor are "recao" (culantro) and "ají dulce", but red and green
Parsley stems resembling celery. Another type of parsley is grown as a root vegetable, the Hamburg root parsley ("P. crispum radicosum" group, syn. "P. crispum" var. "tuberosum"). This type of parsley produces much thicker roots than types cultivated for their leaves. Although seldom used in Britain and the United States, root parsley is common in central and eastern European cuisine, where it is used in soups and stews, or simply eaten raw, as a snack (similar to carrots). Although root parsley looks similar to the parsnip, which is among its closest relatives in the family Apiaceae, its taste is quite different.