caldo de bola

caldo de bola

The recipe for this soup has been one of the most requested and it has taken me long time to post it, I’ve made it several times the last year, each time trying to get it closer to the way it tasted the first time I had it. Getting the flavors right has been the easier part, the hardest part was getting the green plantain balls or dumplings to stay in one piece, they are very fragile and need some care to make sure they don’t break apart while they are cooking. I started out by making the dumpling dough using a masher but the plantain dough came out very chunky so the next time I used the food processor and the result was a lot better (and faster), but even then the dumplings were still too delicate and I had a few that didn’t “survive” (i.e. they disintegrated partly into the broth), so I tried adding a couple of eggs to the dough to help keep it glued a little bit and that seemed to help a lot.
The filling for the dumplings consists of a mix of the beef and carrots cooked in the broth, as well as a refrito (or base) made with onions, garlic, pepper, tomatoes, spices, peanut butter, cilantro, raisins and hard boiled eggs. Nicolas – the husband – wasn’t too fond of the raisins and hard boiled eggs, so sometimes (if I’m being nice) I will leave those out; you can choose to add them or not based on your preference. I also tried different versions of the filling using ground roasted peanuts vs. peanut butter and I liked the peanut butter more, plus it is more convenient to use peanut butter instead of roasting and grinding the peanuts.


For the beef broth the first step is to make a refrito or base, I tried making the refrito two different ways, the first was to combine all the ingredients for the refrito – onion, pepper, tomato, garlic and herbs – in a blender and then mix with the spices and water/broth and bring this mix to a boil. The second method was to chop or dice all the vegetables and sauté them over medium heat with some oil or butter as well as the spices, then add the water/broth. Both methods worked well, the first is very easy and saves a lot of chopping, it also makes it easier to strain the broth once it is done; with the second method I like the flavor that the broth gets from sautéing all the ingredients together.