Frita cubana

As tradition built it

Frita cubana

Havana, 1930s street food

Ingredients

The method as the tradition gives it, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them, lead dishes first.

• 1 lb beef, for the patty
• as available pork or chorizo, optional
• 2 1/2 tsp paprika
• garlic
• 1 onion
• 1 Cuban roll
• 3 potato, julienned (papas julianas)

Method

1. Season the beef patty, sometimes mixed with pork or chorizo, with paprika, garlic and onion.
2. Serve on a Cuban roll.
3. Top with crisp julienned fried potato sticks, papas julianas.

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.

What a modern chef changes

Dehydrated potato, fresh-ground seasoning, direct-heat sear

Method

1. 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.
2. Fresh-grind the paprika and garlic into the patty mix in the spice grinder rather than using a pre-mixed seasoning.
3. 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.
4. 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.