Instant Pot Carne con Papas

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Here comes another quintessentially Cuban dish: Meat and Potatoes! No seriously, that’s the name. Carne con Papas sounds like it could be anything that involves meat and potatoes, but it’s actually a pretty specific dish recognizable to Cubans and Cuban Americans like me, and lots of families have their own variations on how to cook it. It’s a tomato-based beef stew with quartered potatoes, served over a plate of white rice.

Some recipes call for adding eggs, and when I was growing up my mother added scrambled eggs to the leftover carne con papas to make it stretch a little further and feed more people. Of course, because we’re avoiding eggs due to allergies, we omit them. We also add various sides to this, like fried sweet plantains or even a plain banana, and this sweet-savory combo is something you should definitely try one day. Bananas with dinner might sound strange to you, but don’t knock it until you try it.

For this dish, I will actually post 2 recipes. The first one is a variation of Nitza Villapol‘s Carne con Papas. Don’t know who Nitza Villapol is? Neither did I until I started researching the author behind my mother’s cookbook, Cocina Criolla. From what I could tell, Nitza Villapol was pretty much the Julia Child of Cuban cooking. She was a renowned chef, author, television personality, and teacher. I love her cookbook, and I’m learning so much from her recipes.

But I have something Nitza didn’t have: an electric pressure cooker, the Power Quick Pot. It’s pretty much like the Instant Pot, but with different functions such as a Canning setting. For the sake of simplicity though, I’m just going to refer to my electric pressure cooker as an Instant Pot.

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I have 2 Instant Pot Carne con Papas recipes that I will share to this blog. The second one is my mother’s. I’ll post hers another day. We’ll do some taste comparisons at that time, but for now I will say the Nitza version, adapted for the Instant Pot, with just a couple more tweaks from me, left the beef incredibly moist and the flavor subtle but rich throughout.

Two important notes:
1) Nitza calls for 1 cup of capers. A whole cup! Maybe back in the day, capers were super cheap and accessible, but nowadays they are pretty expensive. I cut the caper amount to 1/4 cup because I honestly don’t think having a whole cup is necessary. Having cooked this with a 1/4 cup, I could tell you it was just as delicious as I was expecting, and I didn’t miss the other 3/4 cup.
2) Nitza’s recipe calls for 2 lbs of beef. I guess any beef will do, but I used a 2.25 pound Beef Eye of Round Roast, that costs about $13. Considering it gives 6-8 portions though, this is still a great deal. Basically, with stew meat, don’t be afraid of cheap beef. I wouldn’t do this with ground beef, but you definitely don’t need a super expensive cut of beef either.

The dish is super easy to prepare. I actually cut and seasoned my beef, and cut everything for my sofrito the night before. Everything went from fridge to instant pot when it was time to cook. I think for you meal planners out there, you could probably have everything prepared a few days in advance, or even longer if you have everything frozen together.

Allergy-friendly, convenient, throw-it-all-in-the-Instant-Pot kinds of meals are time-savers, budget-savers, and honestly, sanity-savers for the allergy cautious family. Some days, life throws you for a loop and you don’t have tons of time to put together a healthy dinner for your family, and as I’ve said elsewhere, take out and restaurants are complicated for a family avoiding allergens.

The day I decided to cook this for our blog was a tough one for us, as we just discovered that my 8 month old Caleb also has at least one food allergy. In the morning, I had given him a taste of my peanut butter, something he had not reacted to other times I had fed it to him. A couple of minutes later he began rubbing his face with his little fist. I couldn’t believe that he was reacting because like I said, I’ve given him peanut butter before. But sure enough, hives started developing around his mouth and up his face to his eyelids. Immediately, we gave him Benadryl and rushed to the doctor, monitoring his breathing, with Ben’s epi-pen in my purse in case I had to pull over and use it.

I was really hoping Caleb wouldn’t have allergies. Asher, my firstborn, does not. But I’m not as confused and floored as when we discovered Ben’s allergies. I guess that’s the consolation of experience. I’m upset, but resolved even more to continue learning these recipes and share them with you all here through this blog, and I’m really happy to be able to give you carne con papas. Not only is carne con papas delicious and nutritious, but it’s one of my all time favorite comfort foods, and I was happy to have a plate full of it after an emotionally draining day.

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