Sancocho

Ingredients

• 600 g bone-in chicken thighs
• 500 g pork shoulder, in chunks
• 500 g braising beef, in chunks
• 250 g longaniza, in thick slices
• juice of 2 bitter oranges, or 2 oranges and 2 limes
• 8 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tbsp salt, plus more to finish
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar
• 2 red onions, chopped
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 5 culantro leaves
• 3 litres stock or water
• 400 g cassava, peeled and in chunks
• 400 g yautía, peeled and in chunks
• 300 g ñame, peeled and in chunks
• 2 green plantains, in thick rounds
• 400 g auyama, in chunks
• 2 corn cobs, in thick rounds
• a handful of coriander, to finish

Method

1. Season all three meats together

   Rub the chicken, pork and beef with the citrus, garlic, oregano and salt and leave them for an hour. Sancocho is built on the fact that each meat gives up something different, so they are seasoned identically and cooked separately.

   1 h

2. Burn the sugar

   In a very large pot, darken the sugar in the oil until it smokes faintly.

   3 min

3. Beef first, then pork, then chicken

   Brown the beef and let it cook alone for twenty minutes, then add the pork for another fifteen, then the chicken. They finish at different times, and putting them in together is how you get shredded chicken next to raw-tasting beef.

   35 min

4. Sofrito into the meat

   Add the onions, pepper and culantro and stir them into the fat until soft.

   7 min

5. Longaniza and liquid

   Add the longaniza and pour in the stock. Bring it to a simmer and skim off whatever rises — a clean sancocho is worth the two minutes.

   10 min

6. The hard viveres

   Add the cassava, yautía, ñame and green plantain and simmer for thirty minutes. These are the slow ones, and they are also the thickeners — as they soften they dissolve at the edges and turn the broth into something closer to a stew.

   30 min

7. The soft ones

   Add the auyama and corn and cook another twenty minutes. The auyama should melt away entirely; that is the point of it.

   20 min

8. Rest it, then serve

   Taste for salt, scatter the coriander and let it stand off the heat for at least fifteen minutes. Serve in bowls with white rice on the side, half an avocado, and a wedge of lime.

   15 min