Mexican Picadillo is a classic meal with ground beef, potatoes and a tomato sauce. It is an easy meal to prepare with only a few ingredients. You can easily customize this recipe to make it your own.
Often, you will find it available through Street vendors or maybe even a food truck at festivals or of course if you are visiting Mexico. Usually served as tacos, flour tortillas, or beef empanadas
What is Picadillo?
Picadillo a spicy Latin-American hash or stew of meat and vegetables often with raisins and olives that is commonly used as a filling for tacos or served with rice and beans.
Every Country and region have its own unique version of the dish. It all depends on the vegetables and spices of the area.
Mexican Dinner Ideas
If you are looking for Mexican dinner ideas, then making picadillo’s would be a nice and easy way to have a feast. It’s the perfect meal to serve on Cinco de Mayo!
A traditional Mexican Picadillo recipe is made with ground beef and potatoes. You can spice it up by adding bell peppers. If you like extra heat, try adding in some jalapenos or chillies. The meat and vegetables are stewed in tomato sauce.
If you want to add something more to your dinner, why not try these tasty Turkey Taco cups for appetizers with a Mexican Candy Shot and, for dessert, serve these Mexican Buñuelos.
How to Make Picadillo Sauce
Picadillo sauce is super easy to make so will be ready in no time. Start by adding tomatoes, onions, garlic, jalapeno peppers (remove seeds if you don’t want it too spicy) add your spices and some water to your blender. Puree the ingredients until smooth and set aside until you are ready to add the sauce to the meat and vegetables. If you plan on have a Mexican themed dinner party then this Mexican recipe is just what you need. You can use the main dish for multiple foods for your Fiesta.
Mexican picadillo
Prep Time: 15 min
Cook Time: 22 min
Total Time: 37 min
Ingredients
- 1 pound Ground Beef 80/20
- 4 tbsp Mexican Spices, divided
- 1 Can Fire Roasted Tomatoes
- 2-3 Chipotle Peppers, diced
- 3 cups Baby Potatoes, sliced and quartered
- 1 Purple Onions, sliced small
- 1 of each Red, Yellow, Orange, Green Peppers, diced
- 2-3 Jalapenos, diced
- 3 cups White Rice, cooked
- 8-10 Baby Tomatoes, sliced
- 1⁄2 cup Cilantro, chopped
- 1 Lime, juice
How to make Mexican Picadillo
In a large saucepan add your ground beef, and half of the Mexican seasonings. Toss to combine, cook over medium to high heat for 5 minutes.
Add your fire roasted tomatoes, and chipotle peppers and toss to combine.
Continue to cook until it is fully cooked.
Remove from the pan and set to the side.
Add your onions, peppers, potatoes, jalapenos, and the other half of the Mexican spices to the saucepan and toss to combine.
Cook over medium to high heat for 5 minutes, make sure to stir often. Cover the saucepan and cook for another 10 min or until the potatoes are soft then add the beef to the potato mixture, stir to combine, cover, and cook for 5-7 minutes.
Cook the white rice as directed on the package and add the Mexican Picadillo on top of it. Add the lime juice and half of the diced cilantro and toss to combine. Garnish with the sliced tomatoes.
I hope you enjoyed this Mexican Picadillo as much I did! If you make this recipe, please share your photos with us on Facebook or Twitter!
Mexican Picadillo
Equipment
- 1 saucepan
- Cutting board
- Knife
Ingredients
- 1 pound Ground Beef
- 4 tbsp Mexican Spices divided
- 1 can Fire Roasted Tomatoes
- 2 Chipotle Peppers diced
- 3 cups Baby Potatoes sliced and quartered
- 1 Purple Onions sliced small
- 1 Red Pepper diced
- 1 Yellow Pepper
- 1 Orange Pepper
- 1 Green Pepper
- 2-3 Jalapenos diced
- 3 cups White Rice cooked
- 10 Baby Tomatoes sliced
- 1/2 cup Cilantro chopped
- 1 Lime juice
Instructions
- In a large saucepan add your ground beef, and half of the Mexican seasonings. Toss to combine, cook over medium to high heat for 5 minutes.
- Dice the peppers, and jalapenos and slice the onions and the potatoes.
- Add your fire roasted tomatoes, and chipotle peppers and toss to combine.
- Continue to cook until it is fully cooked.
- Remove from the pan and set to the side.
- Add your onions, peppers, potatoes, jalapenos, and the other half of the Mexican spices to the saucepan and toss to combine.
- Cook over medium to high heat for 5 minutes, make sure to stir often.
- Cover the saucepan and cook for another 10 min or until the potatoes are soft.
- Add the beef to the potato mixture, stir to combine, cover, and cook for 5-7 minutes.
- Cook the white rice as directed on the package and add the Mexican Picadillo on top of it.
- Add the lime juice and half of the diced cilantro and toss to combine.
- Garnish with the sliced tomatoes.
This Mexican Picadillo dish looks delicious. It looks fairly easy & quick recipe to make as well.
This recipe looks really good
I will have to try this as it looks so good and I have almost all of the ingredients.
I have never made this and it is so perfect for Cinco de Mayo thanks for sharing this one.
My pleasure! Enjoy!
Too hot for me
I need to try this recipe It looks very tasty
I have a vegetarian in my house I will use lentils instead of ground beef
We love Mexican food in our family. Would love to make this sometime. Thanks for sharing
I am going to make this with lentils when my sister visits she is vegetarian
This recipe looks delicious. We like spicy foods and this dish is sure to be a hit in our home.
We all like Mexican food but I would have to tone it down a bit since the grandchildren don’t like super spicey food.
You can definitely put less amount of the spices!