Recipe: Easy and Quick Ropa Vieja

The Ropa Vieja dish was first cooked more than 500 years ago. It’s a dish with many regional variations in the Canary Islands, South America, the Philippines, and mainland Spain.

It’s supposedly of Sephardic Jewish origin, where they would slow-cook a hearty meat stew just before the beginning of the Sabbath and keep it warm in the embers so they could have a meal without breaking their religious conventions.

In the New World, it was first brought to the Americas by immigrants from the Canary Islands and was reported to have been first cooked in Cuba in the middle or late 1850s.

It’s indeed a hearty and aromatic stew of shredded beef or goat shoulder meat, simmered in a tomato sauce with onions, green olives, peppers, garlic, and spices. The name translates in English to “old clothes.”

There’s a Spanish folk tale that a penniless old man once shredded and cooked his own clothes because he couldn’t afford food for his family. He prayed over the steaming pot, and a miracle occurred, turning the mixture into a tasty, rich meat stew!

It’s a staple on dinner tables of traditional Latin households and restaurant menus of Spain, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Ingredients:

1 cup beef broth

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 medium Cubanelle peppers or mix of green and red Bell peppers, thinly sliced

1 onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 can (15 or 16 ounces) crushed tomatoes

2 bay leaves

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste

2 pounds flank steak or goat leg meat, cut into pieces

1/3 cup pitted, pickled green olives

1 teaspoon fresh cilantro for garnish (or you can opt to add it into the meat sauce)

36 ounces white rice

Method:

1. In a medium saucepan, simmer the meat in 2 cups of water plus 1 cup of beef broth over medium-high heat.
2. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 2 hours or until very tender.
3. Transfer the meat to a cutting board, and shred it using 2 forks.
4. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the peppers and onion. Cook and stir for 5 minutes or until tender.
5. Add the garlic. Cook and stir for 1 minute or until fragrant.
6. Add the white wine vinegar. Cook and stir 1 minute or until most of the liquid is absorbed.
7. Reduce the heat to low, and add the crushed tomatoes, bay leaves, oregano, cumin, and 1/2 teaspoon each of salt and cracked black pepper. Cook and stir for 10 minutes.
8. Add the shredded meat. Cover and cook for 10 minutes.
9. Remove the bay leaves.
10. Stir in the green olives, and mix. 
11. Prepare the rice.
12. On a large platter, add the cooked rice, and cover it with meat and sauce. Garnish with cilantro, and serve.
13. You can also add cooked black beans on one side for an authentic South American version.

 The recipe makes 4-5 cups.