My First Time Cooking Picadillo

Ever since I retired last summer, I’ve slowly been building up a repertoire of evening meals. My wife is still in the workforce so, as often as I can, I’m trying to have a home-cooked meal ready when she gets home from helping to keep the American economy whistling past the graveyard.

I’ve never been much of a cook. Then again, neither was my dad. Until he retired. It took a few years, but he turned into a damn fine cook, maybe even better than my mom. No mean feat.

Most of what I’ve learned so far has come from the intertubes, following links to other links and watching YouTube videos. Yesterday, I started learning about Picadillo, a traditional dish in several Latin American countries, as well as the Philippines.

But, oh my, there are a zillion versions of it. Many specify ground meat, some use strips or chunks. Beef seems to be the most common protein, but chicken too, and sometimes pork or even seafood. All kinds of ingredients are mentioned in different versions and recipes for it. In the dozen or so I looked at, I think the only ingredients that were used in all of them were onions and salt.

I ended up doing a “composite” version that didn’t match any of the recipes but did use ingredients that came up in many of the recipes. So what’s below isn’t remotely authentic to any of the cultures that make Picadillo. Maybe this is the Norwegian-German-American version.

I started off by chopping up a large red onion and sautéing it on a low-medium heat in grapeseed oil (although I suppose several other oils would work as well):

Then added two chopped bell peppers, one red and one orange (more sautéing):

Then added two pounds of chicken breast in smallish chunks along with a half-teaspoon of fresh ground pepper and just a bit of salt. Raised the heat a bit to make sure the chicken got cooked, salmonella is not my friend. The recipes all mentioned a couple of teaspoons of salt, but I used much less since I’ve been trying to limit my sodium intake. Adding the chicken here seemed a bit odd to me since when making chicken fajitas I’m used to setting the onion/pepper combination aside while cooking the chicken, but none of the Picadillo recipes I saw mentioned doing so:

Then added in a half-cup of salsa, a half-cup of low-sodium chicken broth, and a tablespoon of minced garlic:

Lowered the heat and simmered for ten minutes, then added “some” golden raisins and slivered almonds.

Simmered another five minutes or so, then done:

Served over brown rice with scalloped potatoes and a Thai-cashew salad:

The end result was pretty good, but just a bit dry. If I make it again, I’ll add a bit more chicken broth and maybe twice as much garlic. But not put in the raisins. They appear in most of the recipes but both of my step kids weren’t fond of them, even the more adventurous-eater of the two.

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