The quintessential Costa Rican hash — diced potato and ground beef sautéed with sweet pepper, onion, garlic, and culantro coyote until golden and fragrant.
Picadillo is the workhorse of Costa Rican home cooking — a versatile hash of finely chopped vegetables and protein that can be made with chayote, green beans, corn, or, most classically, potato. It appears at breakfast stuffed into tortillas, at lunch alongside rice and beans, and at dinner as a side dish. No Tico kitchen goes a week without making some version of it. The potato version pairs diced potatoes with ground beef or minced pork, sweet red and green peppers, white onion, garlic, and culantro coyote — a broad-leafed herb with a pungent, grassy punch that is to Costa Rica what cilantro is to Mexico. Everything sautés together in the same pan until the potatoes absorb all the aromatics and develop golden edges. Picadillo de Papas is profoundly humble and profoundly satisfying. It does not aspire to elegance. It feeds you well, uses what you have, and tastes like every Tuesday night of a happy childhood in the Central Valley.
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