Tomaticán Recipe: A Hearty Chilean Beef Stew

This traditional Chilean stew might just become your new favorite summertime dish. We know what you're thinking: Stews and soups are winter fare. But just wait until you try tomaticán. Chunks of tender beef are sauteed with onions and a few herbs and spices, but the real magic comes in the form of two of the best summertime vegetables: sweet corn and ripe tomatoes. It is a simple dish, but it is one that you will find yourself coming back to again and again to celebrate those simple flavors of summer.

While tomaticán is best in summer, when the tomatoes are ripening on the vine and the corn is bursting with juice, this dish is still a stew, and is perfect to make in the winter months using canned ingredients. (For the record, both tomatoes and corn are on the list of vegetables that are good to buy canned.) Should you choose to go with canned vegetables, the preparation time gets even shorter than the original 20 minutes.

However you choose to prepare this South American stew, be it in the heat of summer or to gird against winter's chill, whether it's with the freshest vegetables from the market or cans from the back of your pantry, this perfectly balanced combination of simple flavors hits the spot.

For this recipe you will need olive oil, beef, onion, tomatoes, corn, garlic, paprika, cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, and beef broth. Once you have all of these ingredients together, you are less than 20 minutes away from a delicious meal.

Bring a large skillet or Dutch oven to medium-high heat and add the olive oil.

Add the beef to the pan and saute for 2 minutes.

Add the sliced onions and saute for another 3 minutes, until they begin to soften.

Mix in the corn, tomatoes, garlic, spices, and seasonings, and cook for 3 minutes more.

Add the broth, bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for 5 minutes.

Serve hot, with cooked rice and garnished with cilantro, if desired.

As we mentioned, the best time to make tomaticán is summertime, and that's for a good reason. Two of the main ingredients in this recipe are ripe tomatoes and sweetcorn, both of which peak in the summer months. While there typically aren't a lot of choices for different types of corn at the grocery store — aside from maybe white versus yellow corn, which are essentially the same — tomatoes are a different story. Especially in the summertime, grocery stores sell all sorts of different tomatoes. So, how do you choose the best tomatoes for this delicious Chilean stew?

The short answer is: Pick whichever tomatoes look the best. Anyone who has ever eaten a really good tomato straight from the garden knows there is a magic in it that can't be replicated by what you buy at the grocery store. For this recipe, the variety of tomato doesn't matter too much — just pick the ones with the most flavor. If you have heirloom tomatoes in the garden, that's as good as it gets. If your neighbor brought you a basket of fresh cherry tomatoes, those will work great, too. And the Roma tomatoes from the store ain't bad either. Smell is one of the best ways to pick out a flavorful tomato, so trust your nose — and maybe brush up on the secrets to finding the best grocery store produce. Then again, canned tomatoes also work here, so you really can't go wrong.

With a dish as simple and wonderful as tomaticán — really, it is a complete dish as it is, with plenty of vegetables and protein — there are all sorts of options for what to serve with it. All it's really lacking is a starch component. The simplest way to fix this is to serve the stew with some cooked rice. You can serve it on the side so each person can make their plate exactly how they want. But rice is not the only option for filling that carbohydrate niche with this meal. Fried potatoes are a common accompaniment to tomaticán and make the meal a bit heartier. Bread is another great choice. Obviously, bread and stew go together wonderfully, but Chileans are also known for being some of the greatest lovers of bread in the world. The average Chilean eats about 200 pounds of bread a year!

While it might be hard to get your hands on traditional Chilean breads like pan amasado (which translates to "kneaded bread" and is a typical homemade bread) or marraqueta (which is similar in texture to French baguettes), a nice artisanal loaf or baguette from the store would work just fine. You could even make some pebre to go alongside it. Pebre is typically served with bread in Chile and is a condiment something like a mix between pico de gallo and chimichurri, made with tomatoes, onion, garlic, cilantro, parsley, oil, vinegar, and ají.