Sunday, February 01, 2009

My Lunch Guisado Recipe

I decided to do another food posting here. One of my jobs as a stay at home mother (SAHM) is to feed not only the kids, but also my husband lunch and dinner. Some days my cooking is nothing but a sandwich and some chips but some days I do actually cook. I didn't know what a "guisado" was until I moved to Honduras. I was struggling to find things to cook with my new role as a SAHM. My husband says, "why don't you cook a good guisado?". Huh? What's that? The following day my dear husband showed me how to cook his version. It was good. Very salty, but good. Hondurans have a way of making things very, very salty in my opinion.

Okay, so I found out that "guisado" is "stew" in Spanish. I have made stew before. The kind that you might want to eat on a cold day with dumplings on top. But that is slop to my husband and he pretty much refuses to eat it. Now this other kind of stew - aka guisado - is acceptable.

I have played around with making this since I learned of this dish and kind of follow the same kind of recipe all the time now. You can make it with chicken, which is very delicious too. Sometimes I throw in different kinds of veggies. Corn is a good one. Below is a recipe for my beef version I made for lunch the other day. I'm not the best at writing out recipes and usually my measurements can vary. That's the beauty of guisado - it's very flexible! Maybe you will want to try it too.

Mamasprout's Carne Guisado recipe

Ingredients

  • 1-2 pounds top sirloin (cut into 1-inch cubes)
  • Adobo seasoning
  • 1-2 tsp salt or to taste
  • pepper to taste
  • 3 garlic cloves minced or pressed
  • 1 tablespoon oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 2 tomatoes, diced
  • 2 medium potatoes, cubed
  • 1/2 cup tomato sauce (I use regular pasta sauce)
  • 1/4 cup sofrito (can sub with pasta sauce)
  • 1/4-1/2 tsp oregano
  • 1/2 c chopped fresh spinach
  • 1-2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro plus some for garnish
  • water as needed

Directions

Cube and season meat with adobo. Heat a little oil in a lg skillet over medium heat and place meat in when hot to sear. Cover and simmer until meat is about 3/4 cooked. Next, add 1 tablespoon of oil to meat and add onion, bell pepper, garlic, tomatoes, and potatoes. Let cook until onion and pepper are soft. Add spinach, oregano, cilantro, and stir in 1 minute. Add tomato sauce, sofrito and a little bit of water and simmer for approximately 20 minutes over low to medium heat or until potatoes are done. Add a little water and cover if it becomes too thick. Salt and pepper to taste as it's cooking.

Serve with fluffy rice. Good with cheese on top too and of course cilantro to garnish. Buen provecho!

p.s. if you use stew meat or another tough red meat, a pressure cooker is invaluable to speed cooking time.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

That looks delicious. I wonder if I could so something similar but use shrimp instead? I love Shrimp Creole in New Orleans. Sounds very similar except for the cilantro.

Anonymous said...

wow looks so tasty! but what is sofrito??

Honduras Sprout said...

Sofrito is basically a sauce base of sweet peppers. The homemade sofrito I make, I don't put tomatoes in, but the packages they sell here do have some tomatoes in.

Live Simply Love Strongly said...

Yum! Guisado can be soooo many things. Basically "guisar" is like fried in a pan, so whatever you fry up in their could be guisado. Usually it's in a sauce.

David said...

another dish you might like to try is chicken adobo (or agobo I cant remember the right name.) its a philipino dish made with chicken and papayas when they are still green. I live in the middle east and we have some papaya trees in our backyard here and my friends mom was over at our house one time and she noticed the trees one time and asked us if we had ever had the said dish. Since we had not she took some papaya and brought us some of the dish a few days later. It was delicious. I need to remember to ask her for the recipe one of these days.

Honduras Sprout said...

raikiri- I might need to look that dish up. There are lots of papaya trees around here. Our neighbors actually have so many trees they can't give the papayas away fast enough sometimes. I also go to church with a Philippino family and maybe they might know what that is. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Are you the same girl who used to pick everything apart and sort out the vegetables (and not eat them?). Hard to believe. When you're visiting MN this summer you'll be in charge of cooking and cook authentic Honduran meals.

Honduras Sprout said...

GS- I say that it was due to my highly developed taste buds that was sensitive and couldn't take the taste of veggies.

aighmeigh said...

Sounds absolutely wonderful... especially here where it's coooold!!

I'll have to test out your recipe upon my return way down south :)

JP and Jessica said...

Hi! I'm not sure how I came across your blog, but it's very interesting as I am a gringa who used to live in Tegucigalpa. And I'm now living in Mexico married to my Mexican husband! If you ever need anymore "esposo catracho" approved recipes, I know a lot and am happy to share! I hope you're LOVING SPS! Now go enjoy some pupusas on my behalf! :)

Honduras Sprout said...

Hi Jessica! Thanks for the note.
If you have any great meal hits (that aren't too complicated) - I'm all ears...er, eyes! You can email me offline if you'd like to share any of your recipes!