if you got the time to slow cook a flank steak, this is a great way to make a TON of food and it's some of the most flavorful meat you'll ever put in your mouth. attached a pic from when i made it for like 14 people last summer. got some beef with GOYA as a company but their recipe for this is a really solid one so I linked that. only thing I would add is some worchy sauce to taste while you brown the meat.
Jul 30, 2024
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My grandma used to make it all the time growing up.Ā
Hereās the Ropa Vieja recipe
Ingredients
2-3 lbs of flank steak, cut in strips/chunks
2 onions, one sliced and one quarteredĀ
1 green bell pepper, sliced
1 red bell pepper, sliced
8 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp spanish paprikaĀ
Bit of dried oregano
1/2 cup dry white wineĀ
3 tbsp tomato paste
1-2 tsp of white vinegar
1/2 cup alcaparrado (spanish groceries have this in jars. Itās just a premixed jar of pimento stuffed manzanilla olives and capers. You can always buy those separately and mix. the mix should be mostly olives cause the capers taste strong).Ā
salt to taste
a little cilantroĀ
Steps:
1. youāre gonna cook the flank steak in water and make a broth. Add the cut steak, the quartered onion,Ā Ā half the garlic and a bay leaf to a pot and cover it with water. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for two hours. Remove the beef to cool then shred with a fork. Save a cup a half of the broth for later in the recipe and store the rest for something else.Ā
2. Heat the olive oil in a big pan or pot over medium heat. Youāre basically gonna make āsofrito.ā Youāre gonna fry the bell pepper, onion and garlic together until soft and a little brown (5-10 minutes). Stir in the cumin and paprika and bit of oregano. Then, mix in the tomato paste, and alcaparrado. After thatās cooked for a second add a cup and a half of their broth you made. Simmer for like ten-ish minutes. It should reduce a bit.
3. Stir in the shredded beef and cook for like 20ish minutes.Ā
4.Service with rice at least. Black beans make it better and plantains (maduros or tostones) would make it great.Ā
Feb 16, 2024
if you got six hours to spare to slow boil the meat it will be sooooo worth it. this stuff is so good and slaps on some arepas or cachapas. my mom would also add chopped olives and capers to the meat for some extra tang.
Apr 2, 2024
probably recād this before but pabellĆ³n is one of my fav meals especially when it gets cold out. itās basically just stewed shredded beef but itās so flavorful if you make it right.
I usually follow this recipe with some modifications, mainly that I slow cook the onions and red peppers instead of using a food processor since iām already manning the kitchen for like 2 hours or more slow cooking the meat. I like to get them all jammy and soft in a pan using broth from the meat. I also put bay leaves in with the meat and chicken bouillon in with the black beans for added flavor
Edit: I ALSO FORGOT TO MENTION USING WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE WHEN YOU BROWN THE MEAT
Oct 11, 2024
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
Jun 2, 2025
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I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that arenāt an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to ā which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since youāre listening to something really just because itās the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take whatās served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, itās meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework thatās still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether itās available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so iām forced to consider its value (usually iāll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as iāll buy a few releases iāve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they donāt get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until iām done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isnāt coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, Iām getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether itās bandcamp daily, yāall lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because itās kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences itās like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because thereās no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now iām listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing iāll say ā because in yappin about this iām realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of āvibesā and āaestheticsā and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship iām forming with what iāve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didnāt have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. thatās ok! maybe I rank it lower but now iāve actually taken time to consider it, itās in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often iāll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
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