Ropa Vieja (Cuban Braised Beef) - Food Wishes

hello this is chef john from food wishes calm with ropa vieja that's right we're doing one of the national dishes of Cuba which believe it or not translates to old clothes since apparently someone way back when thought the finished recipe looked like a bunch of torn old tattered clothing but anyway it's been my experience that for something to become a national dish it has to have a lot more going for it than just a cool name and this incredibly delicious braised beef dish certainly does so with that let's go ahead and get started by prepping some flank steak which is what I have right here and what we'll do first is cut this in half across the grain okay you see those meat fibers we're gonna cut straight across those two divide this into two and then once that set we will season this very generously with a mixture of kosher salt freshly ground black pepper and of course cayenne and I should mention modern versions of this recipe often use Chuck instead of flank steak because people say it's cheaper which is true and it works just as well which in my opinion is definitely not true but anyway we'll talk more about that later and for now we'll just head to the stove where we're gonna Brown this on both sides and a little bit of olive oil over high heat and I'll be doing this one piece at a time so as not to crowd the pot and not only are we doing this to flavor the beef but we're also doing it to flavor the pot because by the time we have both of those pieces seared we are gonna have a beautiful looking found on the bottom of our pot which is the culinary term for all that caramelized goodness and creating that before we start braising the recipe is one of the secrets here so let's set our heat to medium and then to all those beautifully brown bits we'll go ahead and add one sliced red onion along with some sliced garlic cloves and a pinch of our salt mixture and we'll go ahead and cook that for a few minutes stirring until they just start to soften up at which point we can go ahead and start introducing the rest of our seasonings and this recipe features lots of my favorites including some ground cumin some paprika some dry oregano preferably Mexican but any type of work we will also sneak in a little more cayenne as well as some ground clove and a little touch of allspice and then what we'll want to do once all that's in there cook this terrine for exactly one minute and as you might be able to see our font is getting better and better and by better and better I mean browner and browner and then what we'll do after cooking those spices for about a minute let's go ahead and deglaze with a splash of white wine and I'll do glaze means is releasing all that goodness off the bottom of the pan using liquid okay there should be a saying a great cook never needs to scrub a stewpot but anyway we'll pour in some wine as well as some tomato sauce or crushed Tomatoes and then we can go ahead and finish off our braising liquids with some chicken broth or or if times are tough you could use water and we will go ahead and give that a quick mix before carefully placing our beef back in along with of course any accumulated juices oh yeah don't forget those and by the way if you're Cuban and you're mad I did not put more tomato in this I'm sorry but my version does not have quite as much as in the classical versions all right I like my ropa vieja a little more pepper and B forward and by the way if you're still looking for a name for your garage band you could do a lot worse than be forward but anyway what we're gonna do here is add a little more salt at which point we'll reduce our heat to low cover this and simmer it for two hours which is something that's just absolutely unheard of for flank steak which is usually cooked quickly to a medium rare but trust me for this recipe it really does work out and then you remember that thing I'm always telling you about how you should try to remember what you forgot well in this case it was a couple bay leaves so I went ahead and toss those in and covered it back up and continued braising down low for two hours at which point the meats gonna be done for this stage but not quite fork tender all right there's definitely still going to be some resistance when you push that fork in but that's totally fine because as you'll see that beef is gonna cook longer after we tear it up so at this point I really don't think we want to fall on apart tender and then what we'll do after our beef is braised is remove that from the heat let it cool down to room temp because I think this comes out way better if you refrigerate it overnight and finish it the next day so this step is optional and you could just carry on if you want but I'm gonna go ahead and let that cool and then cover it and pop it in the fridge overnight and then what we'll do the next day is go ahead and pull that out and while this is still all nice and cold we'll go ahead and remove our to a plate while at the same time turning our heat up to medium-high because we do want this to come back to a simmer and while we're waiting for that we could move on to the tearing of the beef and because we did go with flank steak this is going to be as easy as it is enjoyable because by tearing with the grain we're gonna get these beautiful shreds of beef that are all gonna be roughly the same length and there's obviously going to be a lot of variation but as far as a whip I'm shooting for something between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch although have you said that you can tear this into a smaller as large pieces as you want I mean you are after all the Omar Sharif of tearing your beef oh and if you can try to get to look like old torn clothing or like the frayed bottoms of those cut-off denim shorts you try to make that one time you know the ones where the pockets were longer than the bottom of the shorts that was not a good look but anyway we're gonna go ahead and shred that beef as shown and then once our flank is tore up from the floor up we can head back to the stove for final production where we will add a whole bunch of sliced peppers to our now hopefully simmering mixture in ideally these peppers have been fire roasted and then cut up which I did not take the time to do but don't worry chef Jon's got tricks okay what we'll do is sneak in a little bit of smoked paprika which will add a little bit of a subtle smoky note in the background we will also add in another couple key ingredients a couple tablespoons of drained capers as well as some sliced green pimento stuffed olives oh we have those are not just for martinis and we can also at this point go ahead and toss in our torn beef and then we'll take a spoon and give that a thorough mixing and we'll wait for that to come back to a simmer and then if we want to balance all those sharp briny flavors we can go ahead and add one optional spoon of sugar all right up to you but I do think that helps balance things out and that's it once we have all that stirred together we'll go ahead and reduce our heat to medium and we'll simply let this simmer until our peppers are soft and our meat is tender which I'll gaston say is going to take about 15 or 20 minutes but only you will know by checking and tasting and then what we'll do once we think it's cooked long enough besides of course tasting and checking the seasoning is we will turn off the heat and stir in a nice big hand full of chopped cilantro or if you wanted these people the things cilantro tastes like poison you can use some chopped parsley instead which is not uncommon but I love cilantro so I'm using that and that's it once that stirred in we are ready to serve up next to hopefully some rice and black beans as well as some plantain chips which yes we're a little too perfectly arranged and I went ahead and finished that off a little sprig of cilantro and that's it my ropa vieja is ready to transfer into my cabeza sorry but mouth didn't rhyme and that my friends is one of the most delicious most flavorful most interestingly textured braised beef dishes you will ever have okay despite breaking all the rules about cooking with flank steak this really is magnificent although what's not magnificent is eating a bay leaf so pull those out oh by the way this sauce really is insanely tasty so feel free to use that same formula to braise other things and while it is true this would be cheaper to make if you use chuck roast also known as beef shoulder it is just not the same okay the beef flavor will be similar although I do think the flanks a little beefier but the real difference would be the texture of the torn meat all right Chuck is just gonna shred into smaller pieces and it's not gonna have the same effect okay so if you can afford it please go with the flank steak even if it means having to wear those old clothes a little bit longer but anyway no matter which cut of beef you end up using I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual and as always enjoy you you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 449,616

Rating: 4.9501567 out of 5

Keywords: Ropa, Vieja, Cuban, Beef, Braised, stew, recipe, chef, john, food, wishes, Caribbean, cooking, recipes, main, entree

Id: nJVrHzSYW3g

Length: 8min 42sec (522 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Real_Science]

Great dish! and you have to refrigerate if you can it makes a world of difference. Also when paired with cuban black beans it's damn good.