This Carne Molida recipe is one of the most easy dinner meals to make in 15 minutes! Made with minimal ingredients and maximum flavor.
Carne Molida is what we Puerto Ricans call ground beef and also what we call the picadillo recipe.
Every country has a ground beef recipe and what changes is the flavor. In Puerto Rico, we use sofrito, sazon and adobo to season. The base we use for almost all of the Puerto Rican foods we make.
This is the one recipe I feel everyone should learn to make because it is super versatile you can make various recipes. It is super delicious to be served on top of steamy white rice.
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Why this Recipe Works
There are many delicious recipes to make with this ground beef. I use it to make tacos, lasagna, or for baked potatoes just to name a few. These are just a few of the many recipes we use carne molida as a base:
- The pastelillo masa to make beef pastelillos.
- The green fried plantain cups to stuff with meat.
- Delicious beef alcapurrias.
- Easy beef pastelon.
- As a topping in any hot dog recipe.
Recipe Ingredients
All or most of the ingredients of a Puerto Rican picadillo can be found in the Latin section of your local supermarket or in a Hispanic grocery store.
- Ground beef- I used ground beef with a high-fat content for flavor in this recipe.
- Sofrito-Used 2 tablespoons of green sofrito. You can use recaito or any kind of sofrito you find. If you can’t get any sofrito you can make my homemade sofrito substitute that will work just as well.
- Tomato sauce- I use tomato sauce but you can use tomato paste if you prefer. You just use half of what the recipe calls for the tomato sauce.
- Manzanilla olives- I suggest you add olives even if you don’t like eating them because of the flavor they give the dish. If you don’t like olives ust cook the dish and take it out if you like.
- Water- In this recipe, I use water to make the sauce. I like making the meat saucy.
- Seasonings- I use only sazón and adobo. You can substitute the adobo with salt.
How To Make Carne Molida
- Photo 1: Start by cooking the sofrito and tomato sauce together in a pan over high heat. We cook these first because the sofrito is raw vegetables that we need to cook alone first for better flavor.
- Photo 2: Then you add the ground meat, seasonings, olives, and water. Slowly mix all the ingredients together. Start separating the meat into smaller chunks. The smaller the better.
- Photo 3: Keep breaking the meat apart until all that is left is small pieces. Keep moving it around because ground beef tends to stick together when it cooks.
- Photo 4: In the last step all you do is cook the meat and mix it a couple of times.
Recipe Tips
- You can make ground beef in a crockpot and it will take you about 4 hours. But I say the stovetop method is better because is faster. Another fast way to make it is using an instant pot.
- If you want your picadillo to have a lot of sauce, the best way to do this is to cook it with a lid on. What this will do is to avoid evaporating so much liquid while cooking. This is good for when you are making this recipe to go over basmati coconut rice, mashed potatoes, or veggies.
- I have seen so many recipes that add raisins but a traditional picadillo from Puerto Rico does not include any that’s the Cuban version. But as with everything you can give it a try and see if you like it.
Frequently Asked Questions
That delicious sauce you find in any picadillo recipe is a mix of all the juices from the ingredients and a little bit of water. The sauce has tomato sauce and sofrito which helps make the sauce.
Carne molida and picadillo are the same thing it is just called different in different parts of the world. In Puerto Rico, we call it carne molida but it is fine to call it picadillo.
All these recipes are different in the way they are seasoned and the vegetables that they have. They are similar in that they are all made with ground beef. The Cuban picadillo is different because it has wine and raisins. The Mexican picadillo had different chiles and different seasonings like cumin and thyme. The Filipino recipe has fish sauce and sometimes also soy sauce. The one from Puerto Rico has sofrito, sazón and adobo.
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Puerto Rican Picadillo Recipe
Ingredients
Instructions
- In a large pan over high heat, add sofrito and tomato sauce. Cook for about 2 minutes. Make sure to mix this a couple of times to make sure the sofrito doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.
- Add your meat, sazón, adobo, olives, and water. Break up the meat while it cooks. This is to avoid having lumps of beef. Cook for 10 minutes. Serve and enjoy.
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