Olla de Carne

Olla de Carne translates to "pot of meat" but I feel like there wasn't a lot of actual meat in this recipe. The recipe called for two pounds of beef and roughly four and a half pounds of vegetables. It reminded me of Caldo de Res, which is Mexican beef stew, but with more root veggies.

This was by far the easiest meal I've prepared so far. It was also one of the most boring.

Ingredients

I forgot to take a pic of the ingredients, which was probably the most interesting part.

8 cups water

1 lbs lean beef, cut into 3-4 in pieces

1 lbs lean beef short ribs, cut into 3-4 in pieces

1 cup diced potato

1 lb cassava, peeled and cut into bite sized pieces. Cassava is also known as yucca.

1 lb carrots, chopped

5 corn on the cobs, cut into 3 in pieces

1 lb taro root, peeled and cut into bite sized pieces. I couldn't find taro root so I excluded it.

1 lb sweet potato, cut into bite sized pieces

3 green plantains, peeled and cut into 3 in pieces.

S&P to taste

Heat the water and add salt and beef; cook for 20 minutes. Add carrots, corn, plantains, and cassava. Wait 5 minutes and add the potato, taro, and sweet potatoes. Cook for another 25 minutes until veggies are tender. Serve with white rice.

It even looks boring.

There was just no flavor! If I had to do it again, I would add some kind of seasoning because it was just boiled meat and potatoes, Boiled meat and potatoes is not interesting. It was filling but that's because you were eating like a pound of starch. James liked it a lot and the girls really liked the corn but that's about it. Maybe I just got a bad recipe but the one I used came from costarica.com. I'm pretty sure that's legit.

Maybe I should have thrown in some cilantro...