Stew is Short for Guisado

The easiest way to use up vegetables and possibly tough inexpensive cuts of meat is with a stew. Here is my staple all purpose Latin American Stew, or Guisado. You can use any kind of meat you want, and really any vegetables, I listed some vegetables I use as a starting point. Feel free to add peas, corn, squash, etc.

Ingredients

A cup of store bought or homemade Sofrito

1.5 lb or so of meat

a lime

3 tbsp oil

1 onion, sliced or diced

1 garlic clove minced

2 carrots, washed, peeled, cut into bite sized chunks

2 potatoes, washed, peeled if desired, cut into bite sized chunks
A packet of Sazon Goya
A crushed bouillon (stock) cube

salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste

1. Season meat with salt, pepper, cayenne, to taste. Squeeze a lime or lemon over it. Mix well with clean hands, let marinate for an hour or up to overnight.

2. Heat oil in a big wide pan on medium high heat, put in pieces of meat after patting them dry, fry until a nice brown color. Don't worry about the rawness, remove meat from pan, leaving oil in.

3. In that same oil add onion, stir for a minute or too, when slightly translucent add garlic, literally 10 seconds later or as soon as you smell the garlic add the sofrito. You don't want to burn that garlic. Turn heat down to medium and let cook for a few minutes, until onions are nice and soft.

4. Add in the rest of the ingredients. Using the bowl the meat marinated in, pour in enough water to cover everything 3/4 of the way. Turn heat to medium low and cook for at least 3 hours, checking for salt and pepper, and then cover until the meat is ridiculously tender and the root vegetables are easily pierced with a fork. Serve over my basic white rice .

Let me know if you kiddies were able to make this delicious stew.