Locrio should be considered the national dish of the Dominican Republic. Its background traces back to the Spaniards’ preference for yellow rice. It is a distinctly Dominican dish.
Esteban Pichardo notes that yellow rice is rice cooked with the color provided by saffron or bija (annatto). If pieces of pork and an overload of lard are added, in Puerto Principe they call it “rice with male meat,” while in Santo Domingo it is called “locrio,” and by no means “locro” or “ajiaco.”

For some researchers, the word locrio derives from the union of two terms: locro and criollo. The truth is that locro is a stew made with ground corn, meat, spices, and other ingredients, typical of South America and eaten from Colombia to the Rio de la Plata region. According to Acosta, as early as 1590 it was known as a stew or casserole called locro (Sanchez, 1995: 219). This dish has little relation to the Dominican locrio, which Dr. Elercia Jorge Morel describes in her work Estudios lingüisticos de Santo Domingo as follows: “Locrios: they are cooked based on rice stewed with cod, herring, vegetables, etc.”

The oldest reference to locrio is found in the 18th century. This preparation runs through Dominican history throughout the 19th century, a period in which the famous pigeon locrio was offered as a delicacy of Santo Domingo. Professor Olivier Viuda German Ariza, in the Inventario de cibaeñismos, defines locrio as a “Creole dish made of rice and pork or chicken meat, although it can also be prepared by replacing these meats with longaniza, ham, or cod.”

Max Uribe states that, although the Spanish language is rich and generous, in many cases it has taken words from other languages or dialects of popular speech, which over time have been adapted until becoming part of today’s linguistic heritage. In that sense, he explains that the original meaning of “locro” is nothing more than the famous stew of corn and vegetables. For its part, the term “criollo” designates the descendant of Europeans born in the colonies and comes from the Portuguese crioulo, meaning “a white person born in the colonies.”

Although locrio can be prepared with practically any type of meat, around 20 published recipes have been identified in Dominican cooking. Among them are locrio with salami, chicken, pork, shrimp, “pica pica” with coconut, sausages, ham, smoked chop, crab, cod, okra, vegetables, corn, bacon, longaniza, crab, cod in different variations, wheat with herring, pico y pala, and seafood. As a historical bonus, one from the 19th century is mentioned: cigua locrio.