Skillet Picadillo

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Bring a little taste of Cuba into your home with an easy and family-friendly recipe for Skillet Picadillo, made in just 30 minutes!

Picadillo is one of my families favorite dinners! If your tired of making the same old dinners week after week then it’s time to get a little out of your comfort zone and channel the inner Cuban in you. I would love to introduce you to an easy ground beef dish that your whole family will love. Best of all it’s made in a skillet and in a half hours time.

My toddler loves Mexican food (and I do too). But my husband can only eat so many tacos in one week. I use to make this easy Skillet Picadillo recipe for my husband and I when we were first married some 9 years ago. Like most recipes you make often you take a break and then somewhere in the mix Picadillo just left our monthly dinner plan.

Earlier this year, after our new baby arrived I felt like I was making the same old meals week-after-week. You might wonder how that’s possible for a food blogger, but we too get in dinnertime ruts. We develop delicious tasting recipes but at the end of the day we want easy too.

That’s when I had the ah-ha moment and remembered that way back when I use to make picadillo once a month and we loved it. Since my picky threenager loves ground beef and loves Mexican food I figured he probably would love this.

Boy, was I right! He loved the ground beef and he felt like it was a big treat that there were olives in the meal. He loves olives and whenever we serve salad with dinner he always steals all the olives off our plates (despite my effort of putting a few on his plate).

Ingredients

Here are all the ingredients you need to make this classic Cuban dish.

• Ground Beef
• White Onion
• Bell Pepper
• Garlic
• Plum Tomato
• Cilantro
• Canned Tomato Sauce
• Ground Cumin
• Bay Leaf
• Manzanilla Spanish Olives
• Salt
• Pepper

Directions

1. In a large skillet brown the lean ground beef on medium heat. Use a wooden spoon to break the meat apart (for about 5 minutes) until its just about cooked and no longer pink.
2. Then add in the onion, bell pepper, garlic, diced fresh tomato, and cilantro.
3. Mix well then add in the tomato sauce, ground cumin, bay leaf, and Manzanilla Spanish olives.
4. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for at least 20 minutes with the lid on. *If the picadillo is looking a little thick you can add in 1/4 cup of water to thin out the sauce. Stir occasionally. Once the picadillo is done, divide evenly among plates and serve on top of rice. 

This is a pretty low prep type of meal. I would suggest chopping and dicing all the fresh ingredients and setting them to the side. You could even do this a night in advanced if you really wanted to make this even easier dinner prep (minus the cilantro—I would recommend doing that once it’s time to cook).

Published on September 28, 2017 / Updated with new text and recipe card on April 21, 2020