Photo: Suedehead from Buenos Aires, Argentina · CC BY-SA 2.0
Tacu-Tacu (Pan-Fried Rice and Bean Cake)
A Peruvian dish of leftover rice and cooked beans fried together and shaped into a flat oval. Part of the beans is mashed into the rice so that it holds as one cake, and the pan gives it a crisp outer crust. It is topped with a fried egg or a thin steak and served with fried plantain.
Ingredients
- cold cooked rice · a day old300 g
- cooked beans · canary or pinto, with a little of their liquid250 g
- onion · finely chopped0.5
- garlic · chopped2 cloves
- ají amarillo paste · or a little yellow paprika and chilli flakes1 tbsp
- dried oregano0.5 tsp
- salt0.5 tsp
- neutral oil3 tbsp
- To serve
- eggs2
- ripe plantain · sliced on the diagonal1
Steps
Roughly mash half the beans with a fork, adding 2-3 tablespoons of their liquid. Leave the other half whole.
- ⏲ 5 min
Soften the onion, garlic and ají amarillo in 1 tablespoon of oil over low heat until the onion is translucent.
Add the mashed and whole beans, the oregano and salt, then the rice. Mix, pressing with the spatula, until the grains stick to the beans and it holds together as one mass.
- ⏲ 4 min 30 sec
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil hard in another pan, add the mixture and flatten it. Leave it alone 4-5 minutes to build a crust underneath (reviving leftovers).
- ⏲ 3 min 30 sec
Tilt the pan and fold one side over with the spatula to gather it into an oval, then roll it to crisp the other side 3-4 minutes.
- ⏲ 5 min
In the same pan, fry the plantain golden on both sides and fry the eggs with soft yolks.
Plate the tacu-tacu, set the eggs on top and serve the plantain alongside.
Variations
- A lo pobre. Topped with a thin steak, a fried egg and fried plantain all at once.
- Tacu-tacu de mariscos. A spicy sauce of squid, octopus and prawns poured over.
- Piura style. In Piura in the northwest it is made with canary beans.
Tips
- Use cold rice. Fresh rice turns mushy.
- Mash only half the beans. The mashed beans are what hold the rice together.
- Heat the pan hard. The crust is what holds the shape.
- Leave it alone for the first few minutes.
- A dish for mixing what is left. The name comes from "takuy", to mix different things together, and it is known as a way to use up leftover rice and beans.
More detail and the reasons why (1)
- Stuck together, the opposite of fried rice. Kimchi bokkeumbap uses cold rice so the grains fry up separate. Tacu-tacu uses cold rice too, for the opposite end: the mashed beans fill the gaps between the grains so it holds as one cake, and the side against the pan turns into a brown crust. The stuck bottom that counts as a failure in fried rice is the outside of this dish (cooking rice).
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.
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