Brought to you again from Amanardis! Another simple recipe, this time we are cooking Shredded Meat! Which could be used for Empanadas, Arepas or just Pabellon Criollo, a well known Venezuelan dish which contains Caraotas/Black Beans, rice and fried Plantains besides the shredded meat of course.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 Kg of Meat (Beef or any cut like it).
• 4 Tomatoes
• 2 Big Chives
• 1 Pepper
• 10 Garlics
• 4 Sweet Pepper
• 4 Branches of Cilantro or Coriander
• 1 Onion
• 4 Spoons of spices
• 4 Spoons of Worcestershire Sauce
• 3 Laurel Leafs
• Salt to Taste
• 1 Cup of Oil

PREPARATION

First part consists of Cooking the whole meat in water during 1 hour in a high pressure pan or 2 hours in a conventional pan, the meat will be ready when you poke it with a knife and it cuts through with no effort. Once the meat is ready take it of the fire and leave it in the water until its cold enough so you can start shredding it with your own hands without burning yourself…too much (It’s a lot easier to shred it when its still hot because the meat gets a bit more tough once it cools down).

You can save the water in which you cooked the meat for other purposes but we are going to use it on this recipe, but its mostly used on meat soups. Once the shred its done, the meat should look like strips, these may be long or short, thats personal preference.

On the next part you will need a hot frying pan, put the oil in it and wait for it to get hot enough, throw in the pan 5 chopped garlics cloves and the shredded meat, stir up for 15 mins. When theres only 5 mins left, put the spices and the Worcestershire sauce.

While the meat is cooking cut the onion, the pepper and the sweet peppers, the chives, garlics and the tomatoes. When the cooking is done add half these ingredients you just cut in a blender, for this you are going to use the water in which you cooked the meat, keep blending until they are completely procesed, add the other half of the ingredients to the frying pan with the meat and then pour the blended ingredients too and stir up so everything gets cooked. Crush and add the laurel leaves followed by the chopped Cilantro/Coriander.

Cook for around 40 mins slowly on low flame. Stir from time to time. Remember the meat should not get totally dry.

Voila!

The meat is ready, you can prepare a Pabellon Criollo dish, thats the meat with rice, Caraotas/Black Beans, and fried Plantains as i said before, the meat can also be used to fill Arepas, Empanadas or other stuff, its simple, tasty and nutritious at the same time.