The Caribbean · Volume 12, The Sofrito, the Libreta and the Ninety Miles to Miami
Frita cubana
Havana, Cuba
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 106 sources in the brief
As tradition built it
Frita cubana
The meat chills at least 2 hours.
Ingredients
The patties
- 1 tbsp chorizo fat
- 2½ tsp smoked sweet paprika
- 450g minced beef
- 1 tsp salt
- a little oil
To build
- 3 potatoes, in thin julienne
- for frying vegetable oil
- to taste salt
- 1 onion, finely diced
- 1 tin tomato sauce
- to serve soft burger buns
Method
- Mix the chorizo fat and paprika until deep red.
- Mix in the beef and salt thoroughly. Wrap it in film and chill at least 2 hours.
- Form the meat into balls and flatten them into patties.
- Fry the patties in a little hot oil until cooked.
- Soak the potatoes in water to take off the starch, drain them well and fry them. Salt them and drain on paper.
- Build each on a soft bun: patty, potatoes, onion and tomato sauce.
Notes
The dish was carried whole into exile rather than reinvented there: it reopened specifically in Miami in 1961 at Fritas Domino, opened by Dagoberto Estevil, a dateable, named transplant of a pre-1959 Havana dish rather than a diaspora invention.
The recipe is Dailis's, of RecetaCubana. Sef Gonzalez, Burger Beast, in Miami, mixes paprika, garlic and onion powders, cumin and hot sauce into the beef, smashes the patties on cast iron over diced onion, and finishes with raw onion and ketchup; he dates Havana's frita stalls to the 1920s.
What a modern chef changes
Dehydrated potato, fresh-ground seasoning, direct-heat sear
Method
- Dehydrate the julienned potato briefly before frying, drawing out surface moisture for a drier, crunchier finish with less oil absorption than a straight fresh-cut fry gives.
- Fresh-grind the paprika and garlic into the patty mix in the spice grinder rather than using a pre-mixed seasoning.
- Sear the patty hard and fast on the Big Green Egg's direct heat for a genuinely smoky char a flat griddle cannot give, in keeping with the dish's own street-stall, open-flame origins.
- Fry the potato sticks in small batches at a properly controlled, monitored oil temperature rather than the crowded pan a street stall's volume would have forced, for an evener crunch throughout.