Photo: Parallelepiped09 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Majadito (Rice with Pounded Dried Beef)
Eastern Bolivia's rice dish: charque, salted and dried beef, soaked, boiled and pounded in a mortar until it falls into threads, then cooked through rice coloured yellow with annatto. It comes with a fried egg, fried plantain and boiled yuca. The name is the method — majao means pounded — and meat beaten apart rather than cut spreads evenly through every spoonful of rice.
Ingredients
- Meat
- charque (salted dried beef) · from a Latin American grocer; unseasoned250 g
- Rice
- long-grain rice300 g
- onion · finely chopped1
- tomatoes · chopped2
- green pepper · chopped1
- garlic · chopped3 cloves
- ground annatto (achiote) · or 1 tsp paprika with a pinch of turmeric1 tsp
- ground cumin0.5 tsp
- neutral oil3 tbsp
- meat cooking water and plain water · combined750 ml
- spring onions · sliced2
- To serve
- eggs4
- ripe plantains2
- cassava (yuca) · peeled thickly400 g
Steps
Soak the charque in cold water overnight, changing the water two or three times to draw the salt out.
- ⏲ 40 min
Simmer it in fresh water 40 minutes. Lift it out and keep a cup of the cooking water — taste it for salt before deciding how much goes into the rice.
- ⏲ 10 min
Put the meat in a mortar and pound it dry, until the pieces split along the grain and fall into threads. Without a mortar, beat it in a heavy bag with a rolling pin and finish pulling it apart by hand.
- ⏲ 25 min
Boil the cassava in salted water 25 minutes and drain.
- ⏲ 11 min
Warm the oil with the annatto in a heavy pot over a low heat for 1 minute until the oil turns yellow. Cook the onion, pepper and garlic 5 minutes, add the tomatoes and cumin and cook 5 minutes more.
- ⏲ 5 min
Add the pounded meat and fry 3 minutes to coat it in the oil. Add the rice and stir 2 minutes so the grains take up the oil.
- ⏲ 18 min
Pour in 750ml of the cooking water and plain water together. Taste, and add salt only if it needs it. Bring to the boil, cover and cook on low 18 minutes.
- ⏲ 5 min
For tostado, uncover and turn it from the bottom for 5 minutes to colour it. For batido, add half a cup of hot water and stir it soft. Stir in the spring onions.
Meanwhile fry the plantain, sliced on the diagonal, in 160-170°C oil, and fry the eggs. Serve the rice with the egg, plantain and cassava on top.
Tips & Variations
Variations
- Chicken or duck: Korean Wikipedia gives majao de pollo for chicken and majao de pato for duck. Fresh meat needs no soaking; it is boiled and pulled apart.
- Tostado and batido: the two styles the article names — browned in the pan, or made softer. If the browned bottom is the point of tostado, it sits with paella's socarrat; batido, stirred soft, sits with risotto.
- Like a paella: the article notes that it is sometimes compared to Spanish paella for its method and make-up.
- Charque elsewhere in Bolivia: pique macho has a version with it — "rehydrated dried beef (charque), shredded, gives a much deeper savoury note." There it is shredded; here it is pounded.
Tips
- The name is the method. Korean Wikipedia explains that in Bolivian Spanish majao means beaten and crushed, or pounded, and that the name comes from crushing the meat in a tacú, the traditional wooden mortar. Meat cut with a knife stays in lumps in the rice; meat pounded apart along its grain scatters into threads that reach every grain.
- Dry before you pound. Abgoosht sets the same condition when it pounds its cooked meat: "pound what is left of it dry." Lift the boiled meat out and let it drain before it goes into the mortar.
- Take the salt out first. Charque is meat salted and dried, as the encyclopaedia defines it. Like the ackee and saltfish page's "salt cod soaked until it is fish again", it is soaked overnight in changes of water (soaking).
- Taste the cooking water before using it. The salt and flavour that left the meat are in it. Taste it before it goes into the rice, and use more plain water if it is salty.
- Bloom the annatto in the oil first. The colour travels in the oil onto every grain. A minute on low is enough (blooming spices).
The basics behind this dish
- Browning and the Maillard ReactionMeat fails to brown for one of three reasons: it is wet, the pan is cool, or you put too much in at once. Plus how the brown film stuck to the pan becomes your sauce.
- Cooking Meat: Temperature, Resting, and Cutting Against the GrainDoneness is a core temperature, not a number of minutes. What resting actually does, how to handle a thick cut, and why the direction you slice changes the texture.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
More of the same kind
More from this country
Bolivian →
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