Vaca Frita
A Cuban shredded beef dish with roots also tied to Canary Islands Spanish colonial cooking, built on flank or skirt steak, once a cheap, tough cut historically given to enslaved and working-class cooks, transformed through slow cooking, shredding, and pan-crisping into a prized dish, later popularized in the US through Cuban immigrant communities, especially Miami. It shares its shredded-beef starting point with the site's existing ropa vieja but genuinely diverges after that: ropa vieja stays saucy, simmered further in a tomato-based sauce, while vaca frita is cooked a second time, pan-fried hot in oil until the shredded meat crisps and chars at the edges, dressed only in citrus with no tomato sauce at all.
Meat
Ingredients
- 900g flank or skirt steak
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/2 onion, plus 1 onion thinly sliced
- Salt
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- Juice of 2 limes (or sour orange)
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp oregano
- Black pepper
- 4-6 tbsp oil
Steps
- Simmer the beef in water with the bay leaf, half onion, and salt for 1.5-2 hours until fork-tender.
- Cool slightly, then shred along the grain with two forks.
- Toss the shredded beef with garlic, cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, and citrus juice. Marinate 30 minutes to overnight.
- Heat the oil in a skillet over high heat. Add the beef and sliced onion in a single layer, leaving it undisturbed 3-5 minutes to crisp and char, then flip and toss to crisp further.
- Serve hot with white rice, black beans, and fried plantains.