Sarah Cribbin for DEIB

Speaker: Sarah Cribbin, SimpliFi Operations

Sarah Cribbin: Hello, my name is Sarah and I'm going to be making a Cuban-style Picadillo um, that just vegetarian. So without meat. So first I'm gonna start with some olive oil and a sauce pan at medium heat. And once that is heated, I'm going to add my onions. They are diced. It's about a cup and a half of onions. And I just used white onions. You could use yellow as well. I'm also gonna add about a cup and a half of red bell pepper and I'm gonna let that simmer for 3 to 4 minutes. Now, I'm gonna also add some salt and pepper. Get all that going. So I am half Cuban. My father was born there in the sixties and emigrated to the States when he was about two years old. So Cuban heritage is very much ingrained in me and my family. We cook a lot together. Um My grandmother used to make this a lot growing up along with, you know, fried plantains and empanadas, black beans and rice. All very, very good. My favorite food, I'm very excited to make this. This is actually the first time I've made it vegetarian. So we'll see how that goes. So now that, that kind of cooks down a little bit, I'm gonna go ahead and add my mushrooms and you can use any type of mushrooms. Bella, Shiitake, whatever you have or want to get. I'm also gonna add my minced garlic about the of that. And I am going to use some coconut Aminos for some extra flavor smokiness and I'll just let that cook down for another couple of minutes. So traditionally, this is made with beef, ground beef. Um it's very tasty, but since my husband and I are vegetarian, we don't eat meat. There is an alternative, a couple alternatives you can do, I am going to use ground lentils as the meat. But you can also use, you know, tofu chopped fine. You can use Tempe. I know a lot of grocery stores carry vegetarian ground meat too. So like meatless. So there's tons of options or you can just, you know, make it without any meat or any lentils and just do all vegetables. The flavors will be very good. So this dish I'm making will only take about 30 minutes and it can serve four people. Um I may have increased my ingredients a bit. So this might be leftovers for a few days, which is also great. It's sizzling a lot. It smells very good already, the Coconut Amino is really add a good flavor. OK! So it's been about four minutes. So next I'm gonna add my cooked lentils. This is about two cups which seems like a lot and it probably is so might not use them all. We use about 3/4 of those lentils. Get that all mixed in and I'm gonna go ahead and add my spices. I have some oregano. So about a teaspoon of oregano. I love cumin. So this recipe only calls for like a couple of teaspoons. I'll probably put in a little bit more just because they really like the flavor. So I'm probably gonna add about two tea or maybe a tablespoon and then I like a little bit of spice. So we have some organic cayenne pepper. I'm just gonna add a couple dashes of that and I'll get that all mixed in, gonna add a little bit more salt and pepper as well. And also gonna add my tomato sauce, which this recipe also calls for. So just one can of tomato sauce. And my favorite thing about this dish that also is added are pimento stuffed green olives. So I'm adding about a cup of these or half a cup rather and those are super good, very picky. These ones actually have garlic in them too. So the extra garlicky which I love, OK. And then next, what we need to do is let this sit and simmer for about 15 minutes. Let all those flavors incorporate together and mix in and then it should be ready for serving. OK. So we're gonna pretend about 10, 15 minutes have gone by just because I don't wanna have to make you sit here and watch this go for another 15 minutes. So once all these in these flavors are incorporated, it's pretty much done. Typically how I love it served is with some rice. And so I've prepared some cilantro rice and essentially, you'll just have it poured over on the side and an optional topping you can have with this are some diced raisins really good. Adds a little bit of sweetness to the dish as well. And there is your vegetarian Picadillo with brown lentils as the meat.