Cooking Time!

So. I’ve been learning to cook food, particularly Colombian cuisine. I’ve already learned how to make a few things, like lentil soup, empanadas, buneolos (basically a salty doughnut, using cheese, flower, and eggs), some heavier soups. Today, I’ll be going through a recipe I actually did earlier today, called sudado de albondigas, which roughly translates to meatball stew. Before I go into the recipe, maybe it would be wise to discuss the term sudado.

Obviously, sudado, or stew, is essentially a meat (chicken, meatballs, lean beef cuts, lamb, you can likely also use tofu or fish if you’re inclined to do so) placed in a gravy, composed of many ingredients, which often goes great on top of white rice. This meal is extremely cost effective, extremely filling, and can easily make a bland meal really delicious. The ingredients honestly don’t need to be exact, as you can vary the amount of meat and potatoes as much as you want, as long as you keep the base (the onions, tomatoes, seasonings) it should taste quite good.

Let’s begin, shall we?

2-3 large potatoes. Type doesn’t matter much, but if you like more potatoes, you can add more

4 or 5 half cassava/yuca. I personally don't like yuca too much, but my parents absolutely adore the stuff.

2 medium sized tomatoes. You can honestly go as big as you want on the tomatoes, as tomatoes are mostly water, you’ll just add less water at a later step however, be sure not to add too little tomato, as it’ll make the meal taste significantly worse.

2 medium sized red onions: Same thing as the tomatoes, you can add more if you really like onions, otherwise, 2 onions should be plenty

Some olive or corn oil, not much, about a table spoon full is plenty.

1 lb of ground beef

2 eggs .

¾ cup of bread crumbs.

A adobo type of seasoning, approximately 2-3 tablespoons. Adobo seasonings are basically just turmeric, salt, pepper, and garlic, and oregano. Goya sells a rather good adobo seasoning for approximately 2 dollars, so I usually go for that.

A large pot

Now, you’ll want to begin by dicing the onion and tomato into small pieces. You place the oil into the large pot, and allow it to heat up. After the oil is sufficiently hot, add the tomatoes and onions. Add the adobo seasoning on top, and mix well. While the tomatoes and onions cook, peel the potatoes and slice them into half inch slices. Now, when the tomato onion mixture looks well mixed, it should look like a red mass with the occasional hints of water. Add about a cup of water, and add the potatoes. Put the lid on top, and let it come to a boil.

Take your ground beef into a bowl, and add the 2 eggs and the bread crumbs. Mix well, until there are no traces of bread crumbs or egg left, and form several 2-3 inch in diameter meat balls. Place the meatballs into the stew. Now, I know it looks extremely cramped in the pot, but it’s fine, just moved some of the potatoes aside and add the meatballs in, you want each meatball at least half submerged in the stew. If you want to add yuca, feel free to do so now, as even when frozen, the vegetable takes very little time to cook. Now, when all the meatballs are in, stir VERY lightly, as if you stir too hard the meatballs will break up. Just stir until the mixture seems even. Now you simply put a lid on the pot, and allow it to boil for about 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, it’ll be done. The meatballs can obviously be eaten however you want, and the gravy from the stew makes a great addition to any simple rice dish.

That’s how you make sudado de albondigas!

The measurement on the meat isn’t exact, so it allows a lot of flexibility. This especially works well for lean cuts of meat with very little marbling, as the stew itself keeps the meat nice and moist.

That’s all for this blog post, thanks for reading, and, as for next time? Something different.