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Cuban recipe

How to make Picadillo

All of Cuba

Picadillo
Photo: Cary Bass, CC BY-SA 3.0

Minced beef cooked with onion, peppers, garlic, cumin, oregano and tomato sauce, with green olives, capers and often raisins. It is served over white rice, or used to fill pastries and stuffed potato balls called papas rellenas.

Serves 4 40 min

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 green pepper, finely chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 500 g minced beef
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 250 ml tomato passata or tomato sauce
  • 60 ml dry white wine (optional)
  • 12 pimento-stuffed green olives, halved, and 1 tablespoon capers
  • 2 tablespoons raisins (optional)
  • Salt and pepper, and white rice to serve

Method

  1. Heat the oil and fry the onion and pepper gently for 8 minutes until soft. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.
  2. Add the beef and cook, breaking it up with a spoon, until it is browned all over.
  3. Stir in the cumin, oregano, bay leaf, tomato and wine, and simmer for 15 minutes.
  4. Add the olives, capers and raisins and cook for 5 more minutes. Season to taste.
  5. Remove the bay leaf and serve over white rice.
Made it at home? Tick it off and it goes into your kitchen passport.

The name comes from the Spanish verb picar, 'to mince'.

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