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Cuban Style Tasajo Made With Dry Cured Beef Is So Good!

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Tasajo is made from jerked beef that’s stewed in a tomato-based sauce with lots of peppers and onions. I love this dish! Every time I have a bite of Mami’s tasajo, it brings me back to the Formica dining table in our old duplex in Westchester, one of the most Latin neighborhoods in Miami (outside of Little Havana and Hialeah, of course). What I love about this dish is the saltiness and the texture.

How to best describe tasajo? It’s the salty cousin to Cuban ropa vieja. While using the same ingredients and preparation as ropa vieja, the texture and taste are transformed by the salting and drying process.

What is Tasajo Cubano?

Tasajo is beef that is salted, macerated, cured, and set to dry. It does not require refrigeration and it’s a throwback to time when most homes did not have a way to refrigerate foods. Horse meat was traditionally used in Cuban tasajo, but the tasajo you find in the US is made with beef, and that’s the one I grew up eating.

You may be able to find tasajo in the meat section of your local supermarket, but not always. You’ll have much better luck finding it in Latin supermarkets, sold in vacuumed sealed packages. But if you can’t find it locally, you should be able to purchase it online. (I have not purchased from this company before and this is not an affiliate link.)

Start this recipe the day before

Not gonna lie, this dish takes a while, but it’s worth it! First, you need to remove it from its packaging and soak overnight to remove some of the salt. The tasajo meat is covered in an orange layer of fat. The orange color is due to the beta carotene.

You can remove this layer of fat and soak it, but I don’t usually bother removing it (call me lazy… but Mami does it the same way). For those of you who are more industrious, you can remove the orange layer by scraping it off and washing with warm water. Divide the meat into 2-3 pieces, cutting against the grain.

Cooking and prepping

The next day, drain the tasajo and place in a pot with fresh water. Turn up the heat until the water begins to boil. Lower and simmer for 20 minutes or so. The orange layer will melt away. Drain and repeat the process, boiling for another 20 minutes. Drain once more and let it cool. If you’re in a hurry, you place it in the refrigerator to cool.

Once cooled, shred the meat with your fingers and remove any fatty pieces you find. Taste for saltiness and rinse over warm water if it’s too salty for your taste. From this point on, the process is very similar to making ropa vieja.

Cut half an onion, and a red bell pepper into slices and crush two garlic cloves. Set a sauté pan over medium heat, add a few tablespoons of olive oil and sauté the onions and peppers until translucent. Add the crushed garlic and cook for another minute. Then, add the tomato sauce, cooking wine, cumin, oregano and pepper. Add the shredded beef and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Adjust seasonings as needed and serve. Que rico!

What To Serve with Cuban Tasajo

Serve this dish with congri rice and boniato, a Cuban sweet potato. The dry, cured beef is rather salty so the mild flavor of the rice and beans and the sweetness of the boniato truly balances the dish… and I would argue it’s a must.

Cuban red beans and rice — Red Bean Congri

You can make congri rice with black beans or red beans. For this blog post, I paired this dish with the red bean congri, but it’s just as tasty with the black bean congri. Actually, the black bean version, also known as Moros y Cristianos, is the more popular rice dish.

Boniato is a Cuban potato that is white and slightly sweet. If you can’t find it, substitute with sweet potato. You can cut into chunks or rounds and boil it, roast it, fry it or stew it along with the meat. If you decide to stew it, you’ll need to add a little more sauce to the dish, so double the tomato sauce and cooking wine. Also add a bit of water if you notice the sauce is drying up.

As I was working on this recipe, I thought about the importance of balance. The salty tasajo really needs the counterpoint of the sweet boniato to really shine.

We all need a little balance in life, like ying and yang, sweet and salty, fire and ice.

Community helps us find this balance. Friends, family and significant others require us to make changes, to compromise, to let go of some things to accommodate others. We may not always like how messy this can be, but just like with cooking, a messy kitchen can lead to a spectacular feast.

So the next time you’re wishing someone would see things your way, do things your way or let you have your way, just think of how delicious it could be to embrace a different perspective, a new approach, a road less familiar to you.

Savor every moment, every bite, every fork in the road.

Cuban Style Tasajo Made With Dry Cured Beef Is So Good!

Author: Sandi Abbott
Prep Time: Soak overnight, 15 minutes of prep
Cook Time: 45 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour
Yield: 4 servings 1x
Category: Entree
Method: Stovetop
Cuisine: Cuban

Print Recipe

Description

Tasajo is dry cured beef that’s stewed in tomato sauce with onions, red bell peppers and savory spices. It’s the salty cousin to Cuban ropa vieja.

Ingredients

Scale

1 lb tasajo (dry, cured beef) See note

½ a small onion (1/2 cup), chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed

Half a red bell pepper, cut into strips

½ cup tomato sauce

2 tablespoons cooking wine

½ teaspoon oregano

½ teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Tasajo Prep:

Start the day before. Remove the tasajo from its vacuum sealed package and cut into 2-3 pieces, across the grain. Set in a bowl and cover with water and let it soak overnight. You can leave it out or refrigerate, whatever you prefer.

The tasajo is covered with an orange fat layer. You can rinse this off or leave it on, either way it’s OK.

The next day, drain the water. Add the tasajo to a pot filled with water. Boil for 20 minutes. The orange layer will melt away.

Change water and bring to a boil and boil for another 20 minutes.

Remove the beef from the water and let it cool. Shred the beef with your fingers and remove any fatty tissue.

Chop the onion, cut the red bell pepper into slices, crush the garlic.

Take 2 tablespoons of olive oil and sauté onions and peppers until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the beef, tomato sauce and cooking wine. Cook for about 15-20 minutes (if it’s a bit dry, add a ¼ cup of water).

Serve with congri and fried boniato. See note.

Notes

Tasajo is sold in vacuum sealed packages, and it’s covered with a bright orange layer of waxy fat. Don’t be put off by this, this layer helps preserve the meat and it melts away when you boil it. You should be able to find this specialty beef at most Latin supermarkets.

Boniato is a Cuban sweet potato that’s traditionally served with the tasajo. The sweetness of the potato helps balance the saltiness of the beef. If you can’t find boniato, substitute with sweet potato. Cut the potato into chunks or quarter inch think rounds, then roast or fry. You can also boil the potato (I never boil, though. It’s so much tastier when it’s fried or roasted.

Keywords: tasajo, cuban tasajo, tasajo cubano, cured dry beef

This Cuban Chicken Soup Makes You Feel Loved!

Leave a Comment / CUBAN, DINNER, SOUPS & STEWS / Recipes

Comforting Cuban chicken soup is on every abuela’s arsenal! This is the cure if anyone has a cold or is just a bit under the weather! Chicken noodle soup seems so basic I almost didn’t add this recipe to the blog, but it’s my favorite soup and it just takes me back to my childhood and feeling loved on when I had a cold. Lots of love goes into making this Cuban chicken soup and even if it doesn’t cure the common cold, it cures the common cold blues.

While it’s packed with love, this homemade Cuban chicken noodle soup is super simple to make. The first time I made it on my own, I got it all wrong because I added too many seasonings, and the broth was not clear and golden like Mami’s. It didn’t taste anything like her Cuban chicken soup.

Cuban Chicken Soup Like Mami Makes

I called Mami to see where I had gone wrong. Here’s what she told me:

Use dark meat with the bones to make the soup. This is what gives the broth such a great flavor.
Add onions, garlic, green peppers, tomato, carrots, celery, culantro and and bay leaves to the chicken and simmer for an hour. Culantro is a long leaf often used in Cuban cooking. You can find it with the other herbs. But if you can’t find it, don’t sweat it. I don’t always add it.
Strain the soup and press all the vegetables through a sieve to get all the flavor out of it. Mami likes to use a pestle to squeeze every bit of flavor out of the veggies and into the soup.
Then add potatoes, fresh carrots, corn cobettes, and noodles. Add salt to taste. Chop the chicken and add it back into the soup.

I made a few of my own edits to her Cuban chicken soup. I use red bell pepper instead of green pepper, and I add some saffron threads at the end. It gives the soup great flavor and a nice, golden color. Mami uses Bijol, a red food coloring used in many Cuban dishes. But I don’t like using the coloring, so I usually use paprika and/or saffron for flavor and golden color. Saffron is used in Spanish cooking, especially in making paella. But I love the flavor so much, I add it to many dishes, including chicken soup.

The Best Noodles for Cuban Chicken Noodle Soup

Cubans use fideos to make this chicken soup. These noodles are as thin as angel hair and are shaped into little bundles. You can make it with angel hair pasta, but I really love using these! Maybe it’s because I grew up eating them, or maybe it’s because they look like little birds’ nests. I like my soup with three little bundles, which I break up just before adding. If you can’t find these in the grocery store, you can also make it with angel hair pasta. If you use angel hair, break up the noodles before adding them to the soup.

This Cuban chicken soup really hits the spot when you’re sick! But really, it hits the spot all the time, especially with a thick slice of buttered Cuban bread.

So, I made my Cuban chicken noodle soup today. When my daughter walked into the kitchen and smelled it, she wanted to know who was sick. Yea, I pretty much make this soup when someone is sick. But, I should make it more often because it’s delicious!

Food associations are so strong! I have such vivid memories of having a comforting bowl of my mom’s delicious Cuban chicken soup when I was sick. It made me feel loved and cared for. So, I do the same thing for my kids. But I really shouldn’t wait until they’re sick to love on them with this soup.

Sometimes we save certain things for special occasions, but every day can be remarkable. Life is too short to limit the good stuff for just sometimes. So this Cuban chicken soup, hugs and kisses, and quality time are for every day because every day is special. ❤️