Carne con Papas (meat with potatoes)

Carne con Papas

 

Time: 2-3 hours

Makes 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients:

2 lbs. beef (for soup) 

½ cup oil (vegetable or olive)

1 tbsp. of salt

1 tsp. paprika

½ tsp. pepper

1 bay leaf

1 large onion (or 2 small onions)

3 cloves of garlic

1 green pepper

1 can of tomato sauce (8 oz.)

1 cup cooking wine

1 cup water

2 lbs. potatoes (about 3)

1 cup of alcaparrado (mix of olives, capers, and pimento)

                                      

Prep:

• Before cooking, dice the onion and green pepper and mince the garlic.
• Normally you can buy pre-packaged beef for soup which is already cut into chunks. If you cannot find this, just cut your beef into approximately 2-inch cubes.
• You can find alcaparrado already pre-mixed and bottled at the market, but you can make your own by mixing equal parts quartered olives, diced pimento, and capers.

                                                 

Directions:

• In a large saucepan, heat the oil on medium and fry the chunks of beef.
• Once they have lightly browned, add the salt, paprika, pepper, bay leaf, onion, garlic, and green pepper.
• Once everything has softened (indicated by onions becoming translucent), add the tomato sauce, dry wine and water. 
• Bring to high heat. Once broth begins to bubble, bring to a simmer and cover pot. Leave cooking for 1-1.5 hours.
• While broth cooks, peel the potatoes and cut each into 6 large chunks. Place in a bowl of water, then strain when ready to use.
• You will know broth is ready when you can easily stick a fork in the meat (should not fall apart yet). At this stage, add the potatoes and alcaparrado.
• Cover again and allow to cook for another hour, or until the potatoes are soft and the meat is fully tender.
• Best served with white rice. Rice recipe can be found here.
  

Notes:

• This dish came out delicious. It was very easy too make, it just took a while to allow to cook.
• I think the 1/2 cup oil was too much, came out slightly too oily. I would reduce it to 1/4 cup.
• Add more meat! For a family of 4, the meat was gone real quick.
• I feel like you can experiment with other spices in this dish, so feel free to add a little oregano, cumin, more bay leaves, etc.

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Receta Original:

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CARNE CON PAPAS

 

2 lbs. de carnes de res

½ taza de aceite

1 cda. de sal

1 cdta. de pimentón

½ cdta. de pimienta

1 hoja de laurel

1 cebolla

3 diente de ajo

1 aji

1 lata de salsa de tomate

1 taza de vino seco

1 taza de agua

2 lbs. de papas

1 taza de alcaparrado

 

            Corte la carne en cuadraditos. Sofríala en el aceite caliente. Cuando este ligeramente dorada, añada la sal, pimentón, pimienta, laurel, la cebolla picadita, los ajos machacados y el ají picadito. Y cuando esto se dore ligeramente, añada la salsa de tomate, vino seco y agua. Déjelo al fuego hasta que la carne este medio cocinada y entonces agregue las papas cortadas en cuadraditos y el alcaparrado. Déjelo cocinar hasta que la papas estén blandas y la carne cocinada. Si fuera necesario para terminar la cocción añada un poco mas de agua y vino seco. Da 6 a 8 raciones.