Beef steaks cooked in a pan with tomato, scallion, garlic and a little water until the sauce reduces onto them. Three steps, thirty minutes, and nothing is roasted or grilled.
Nothing is roasted
The page was called roast beef in tomato sauce and the recipe card called it grilled meat, and it is neither.
The three instructions put the steaks in a pan with water, tomato, scallion, garlic and peppercorns, cold, and cook everything together for twenty minutes. That is a braise, and in Colombia it is simply carne en salsa: one of the plainest and most common ways to cook a piece of beef on a weekday.
It matters because roast beef means something specific in English, and anyone arriving expecting it would find a completely different dish.
Half a glass of water
It looks like an odd amount and it is doing real work.
At the start it keeps the pan from scorching in the minutes before the tomatoes break down and release their own liquid. After that, it is what the steaks braise in, which is what keeps them tender over twenty minutes of cooking.
By the end almost all of it should have evaporated, leaving a sauce that clings.
Everything in cold, together
There is no browning stage. The meat, the tomato, the scallion, the garlic and the pepper all go in at once with the water.
That is unusual for beef and it is deliberate: browning would need oil and a hot pan, and this recipe has neither. What you lose in colour you gain in a sauce that has had the full twenty minutes to take on the flavour of the meat.
Reducing it
The second step is explicit that the sauce should have reduced almost completely, and that is the signal to stop.
Too soon and the steaks sit in a watery liquid. Too late and the pan dries out and the tomato catches. Somewhere in between is a sauce thick enough to spoon over the meat.
More beef
- Steak with mushrooms — in a cream sauce.
- Beef stew — the longer braise.
- Carne desmechada — simmered until it falls apart.
- Grilled beef — this one actually is grilled.
Beef in Tomato Sauce FAQ
No, and the old title was misleading. Everything goes into a pan together with half a glass of water and cooks for twenty minutes. It is a braise, not a roast.
Two things. It stops the pan burning before the tomato releases its own liquid, and it gives the steaks something to braise in so they stay tender through twenty minutes.
It is, and this is not a recipe for a rare steak. The point is meat that has taken on the flavour of the sauce and a sauce that has taken on the flavour of the meat.
When the liquid has almost gone and what is left is clinging to the steaks rather than sitting around them.
Scallion, cebolla larga, which is what the ingredient list has. The instruction said onion and meant the same thing.
Yes, but use a wide pan. Steaks stacked on top of each other steam instead of braising, and the sauce will not reduce.
📖 Recipe
Carne en Salsa de Tomate (Beef Steaks in Tomato Sauce)
Imprimir Pin ComentarIngredients
- 2 beef steaks
- 2 tomatoes (finely chopped)
- 1 sprig scallion (cebolla larga, finely chopped)
- 1 clove garlic (finely chopped)
- 3 peppercorns (crushed)
- ½ glass water
- Salt (to taste)
Notas
Instructions
- Put the water, the steaks, the tomato, the scallion, the garlic, the crushed peppercorns and salt to taste in a pan over medium heat.
- Cook for 10 minutes on each side, until the sauce has reduced almost completely and is clinging to the meat.
- Serve.
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