Kitchen Secrets with Our Cuban Chef – Boliche Relleno

Boliche relleno is the Sunday roast of Cuban home cooking. A whole eye of round is hollowed out down the middle, packed with chorizo, marinated overnight in garlic and sour orange, then braised until a fork slides through it without effort. Slice it and every piece carries a dark ring of sausage at the centre.

The cut itself does not look promising. Eye round is lean, tight-grained and unforgiving, the piece of beef most likely to come out of a pot dry and stringy. Cuban cooks worked around that a long time ago. Fat runs through the middle, the marinade seasons it all night, and the pot never rises above a bare simmer. What you get after three hours is tender, sliceable beef sitting in a sauce built from its own juices, onions and tomato.

This is not a weeknight dish. It wants a night of marinating and an afternoon of low heat, which is exactly why it ended up on Sunday tables. Here is how we make it.

Why the cut is called boliche

In Cuba, boliche is the name of the cut, not the recipe. It is the eye of round, the long narrow muscle that runs alongside the bottom round, and Cuban butchers have sold it under that name for generations. Relleno simply means stuffed.

The technique came from Spain. Spanish cooks pushed strips of pork fat, ham or bacon into lean roasts with a larding needle, a practice called mechar, and the roasts that come out of it are still called carne mechada in parts of Spain. Cuban kitchens widened the channel and put chorizo in it, which changed the whole character of the roast. As the sausage warms it releases paprika, garlic and fat straight into the beef around it, seasoning the meat from the inside while the marinade works on it from the outside.

The marinade is the same mojo that goes on pork: garlic mashed with salt, sour orange juice, cumin and oregano. That combination is the backbone of the island’s cooking. A night in the mojo seasons the outside of the roast and gives the sauce its edge later, but it is not what makes the meat tender. That is the work of the braise: hours at a bare simmer are what soften a lean cut, and nothing you do in the marinade replaces them. Families cooked boliche for Sundays and for holidays, when one piece of beef had to feed everyone at the table and still look like an occasion. The families who settled in Tampa brought the dish with them, and it still turns up on Sunday tables here.

Ingredients

• 1 beef eye of round roast, 3 to 3 1/2 lb, in one piece
• 8 oz cured Spanish chorizo, in whole links or cut into long batons
• 8 garlic cloves
• 2 tsp salt for mashing with the garlic, plus more to season the sauce
• 3/4 cup sour orange juice (naranja agria), or 1/2 cup orange juice mixed with 1/4 cup lime juice
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 large white onions, sliced thin
• 1 green bell pepper, seeded and sliced thin
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 cup dry white wine
• 1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
• 2 cups beef stock
• Butcher’s twine

How to make Cuban Boliche Relleno

1. Trim the silverskin off the roast. Stand it on one end and push a long thin knife straight down through the centre, then work the blade in a slow circle to open a channel about an inch wide. Repeat from the other end until the two cuts meet. Keep the opening centred. If it drifts to one side, the thin wall of meat there will split during the braise.
2. Push the chorizo into the channel from both ends, using the handle of a wooden spoon to seat it. Pack it tight, with no gaps. The roast should feel solid, not loose, when you press on the ends.
3. Mash the garlic with the 2 teaspoons of salt into a paste, then stir in the sour orange juice, cumin, oregano and black pepper. Put the roast in a deep dish or a large bag, pour the mojo over it and spoon a little into each open end. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight, turning it once.
4. Take the roast out 45 minutes before cooking. Lift it from the marinade and save every drop of the liquid. Pat the surface dry, then tie the roast with butcher’s twine at 1-inch intervals so it holds its shape and the stuffing stays where you put it.
5. Heat the olive oil in a heavy caldero or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown the roast on every side, 12 to 15 minutes in total, until the crust is deep brown rather than grey. Do not push it with higher heat, and do not move the meat until each side releases on its own. Lift the roast onto a plate.
6. Lower the heat to medium. Add the onions and green pepper to the same pot and cook 8 to 10 minutes, scraping the browned bits off the bottom, until they soften and start to colour at the edges. Add the bay leaves, pour in the wine and let it bubble down for 2 minutes.
7. Stir in the reserved marinade, the tomato sauce and the beef stock. Return the roast along with any juices from the plate. Bring it to a bare simmer, where only a few bubbles break the surface, then cover and cook 2 1/2 to 3 hours over low heat, or in a 325F oven. Turn the roast every 45 minutes. It is ready when a fork pushed into the side meets no resistance.
8. Move the roast to a board, tent it with foil and rest it 20 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile take the lid off the pot, fish out the bay leaves and reduce the sauce over medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes, pressing the onions against the side of the pot to break them down, then season it. Cut off the twine, slice the roast across the grain about half an inch thick, and return the slices to the pot for 5 minutes in the hot sauce before serving.

Chef’s notes

• Use cured Spanish chorizo, the firm dry kind. Fresh Mexican chorizo is a different sausage. It renders out during the braise, leaves a hollow tunnel where the stuffing was, and turns the sauce greasy and gritty.
• Slicing it hot is the most common way this dish falls apart. The slices shred and the chorizo pushes out. Rest it properly, or better, cook it a day ahead, chill the whole roast in its sauce overnight, slice it cold and clean, then reheat the slices gently in the sauce.
• Watch the heat under the pot. Eye round has almost no marbling to protect it, and a rolling boil tightens the fibres and dries them out no matter how long you cook it. If the surface is churning, the heat is too high.
• Skipping the twine costs you the shape. Without it the roast swells and twists as it cooks, the channel opens up, and the slices come out ragged instead of round.

What to put on the plate

Boliche needs something underneath it to catch the sauce. Plain white rice is the standard answer and still the best one, though congri works if you want the beans in the same bowl. Spoon the onions over the slices rather than beside them.

Round the plate out with sweet plantains, which set off the paprika and tomato in the sauce, or with fried yuca if you want something to soak it up. A simple salad of lettuce, tomato and thin onion rings dressed with oil and vinegar cuts through the richness of the rest. Whatever sauce is left is worth keeping. It makes a second dinner over rice or pasta the next day.

Prefer to let us cook?

Boliche relleno takes an afternoon, and some Sundays you do not have one. The same garlic and sour orange marinade goes on the Roast Pork we cook at 5555 S 78th St in Tampa, with rice and plantains to go alongside it. Order it for pickup, or look through the full Cuban menu and let us do the long cooking.