Cuban Picadillo Recipe (2024)

Classic Cuban one-pan dish that’s perfect for a quick, 30-minute weeknight no fuss dish. Full of savory and aromatic ingredients this dish also makes for great, easy leftover ideas.

This dish is a beautiful collision of briny olives, meaty ground beef, and an herbaceous tomato based sofrito. They were meant to be together.

What is picadillo?

Picadillois a traditional dish in manyLatin Americancountries as well as thePhilippines. It’s basically a one-pan dish akin to a ground beef hash. Regardless of regional variations, it will feature a combination of ground beef, tomatoes (or tomato sauce), and olives. Other common ingredients include raisins, potatoes, capers, peppers, onions, and garlic.

Cuban Picadillo Ingredients

The beauty of this dish is you’re likely to have most of the ingredients on hand and can find worthy substitutes if not. You can also easily tweak it to fit your specific tastes. However this is a briny dish, so if that’s not your thing you might want to skip this one.

Ground beef is the star. But feel free to use ground turkey if you prefer to opt for a non-beef option. I had ground venison on hand and used it for this recipe. The briny olives and capers tame the gaminess very well.

How To Make This Picadillo Recipe

Step 1: Make the sofrito

Step 2: Saute the onions, peppers, and garlic

Step 3: Add ground meat and remaining ingredients

Serving Suggestions

In Cuba, picadillo is often served with rice with a fried egg on top. I like to use a coconut ginger rice or yuca fries. You can never go wrong with black beans

Can Picadillo Be Made Vegan?

Yes indeed. Just follow the same steps as the regular recipe with a few simple changes.

1. Feel free to substitute any vegan ground meat or better yet, go with jackfruit in place of the ground beef.
2. In my vegan version I added potatoes at the vegetable sauce step
3. Add raisins just before the simmering step.

Leftover Ideas

The best thing about picadillo besides its simplicity is the fact that it’s so economical. Not only are most of the ingredients common and fairly cheap, but you can stretch the recipe pretty far and get so many different uses out of it. I intentionally make a bigger batch than needed just for leftovers. Picadillo is perfect in:

stuffed bell peppers

tacos

quesadillas

Empanadas

nachos

Key Cooking Tips

• Make a sofrito ahead of time and use as base flavor in this dish. You can certainly make good picadillo without it and most recipes don’t call for it, but I highly recommend it to take the dish to that other level of the game.
• Sofrito will keep refrigerated for 5 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.
• I like briny food and with the gamey venison upped the brininess in the dish. For less of a briny taste eliminate the capers. But if you like brine like me, feel free to add some of that olive juice.
• The entire dish can be made ahead if you prefer. The flavors actually blend even more after sitting.
• For a more filling, heartier version dice some potatoes and add them at the sauce step

For other Cuban Inspired dishes try these:

Cuban Sloppy Joes

Cuban Spicy Ketchup

If you make this Cuban picadillo recipe or any other from the site, please come back and leave me a comment below with your feedback. Definitely take a photo of the dish and be sure to tag #foodfidelity so that I can see them.

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