By The Huffington Post News Editors
When you look for recipes for that classic Cuban dish, Aporreado de Tasajo, a beef stew that is famous and unique for its salty chewy meat, it will tell you to use dry salted beef, and the usual ingredients for sofrito: onion, green pepper, garlic, cumin and olive oil. What most recipes for Tasajo won’t tell you is that to make real Cuban Tasajo, you need to use horse meat instead of beef.
Tasajo, like Brazilian Feijoada, is a dish slaves were forced to devise using whatever ingredients were available to them, usually discards or cheap cuts of meat and vegetables. Tasajo is made with a type of beef jerky, beef that has been dried and salted as a preservative. It’s a throwback to the days before refrigeration, just like for years salted cod was a staple of many kitchens in the Western world.
Horse meat has a sweeter taste than beef, and for those who have the palate for real Cuban Tasajo, horse meat is a must ingredient. In 2009, South Florida officials saw a dramatic rise in sales of illegal horse meat. According to a 2009 article in USA Today, over a dozen and a half horse carcasses were found in Miami-Dade County that year.
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