Picadillo, A Cuban Flavoured Ground Beef

Cuban Picadillo is a Cuban meat, ground beef, dish that is traditionally served with rice, black beans and a salad. Perfect weekday dinner, easy, delicious warmed up for the kids lunch!

Today, you might not need a special trip to the grocery store to make this Picadillo recipe… It might already be in your pantry and fridge, otherwise, you can pop up quickly in a store and come back to this page!

Trilingual life

Funny thing, I am French and I am sharing more Cuban recipes (like this one or that one) here so far!  After all, I fell in love with a Cuban, his lovely Cuban family and his beautiful island and today, let’s try Cuban Picadillo!

Of course, at home, when it comes to cooking, I bring my French touch, el Cubano, his culture and well, we are in Canada so some North American flair too!  What a combo but that makes things in the kitchen more interesting.  Now, I have discovered some Cuban dishes and then adapted them.  Also, I have adapted French recipes because I could not find certain ingredients here.

I remember my very first shopping trip after arriving from France, I had orange juice in my basket and I was just walking around in looking in the aisles like you look at the paintings in a museum.  But that was 7 years ago, almost 8.  I can fill up my cart now, no problem!

If you have Picadillo leftovers, I have a nice quick dinner fix but that is for another day…!

If you need to sharpen your knife skills (see what I did here!) you can visit and subscribe to my Youtube channel. Tutorials are under a minute and you will see how I chop my onion, peel my tomatoes or cut a pepper!

Print Recipe

Cuban Picadillo

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Cuban

Keyword: Cuban, ground beef, meat, weekday meal

Servings: 4

Author: Mélanie

Ingredients

• 1/2 Green Pepper Diced
• 2 Tomatoes Diced
• 1 medium-sized onions Chopped
• 3 cloves Garlic Chopped
• 350g Ground beef
• 1 cup Tomato sauce
• 1 tsp Cumin
• 1 tsp Oregano
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• First, you need to prepare the sofrito. It is a base in the Cuban cuisine. Chop your onion, your garlic, dice your green pepper and in dice your tomatoes. Let it simmer.
• Once it has cooked down a little, add your ground beef and cook it at medium heat. Mix the sofrito and the ground beef together.
• Once the ground beef has cooked a little bit, slow down the heat. Add the purée of tomatoes, the cumin and the oregano, mix a little.
• Add salt to taste and let it simmer until fully cooked.