Dominican Bollos de Yuca

I first encountered these at my Latin market with my five-year-old. After taking a tentative nibble she gobbled it all up so fast I barely got a bite. Crispy golden brown on the outside, fried yuca is soft on the inside, a little chewier than a French fry. In the middle is steaming seasoned ground beef.

Click herein to get to know the full story of our adventure, the recipe, my teacher, and photos of how to make these yourself at home.

Print the Recipe

Dominican Bollos de Yuca

Bollos need to be frozen before frying (it helps them stay together), so you prepare them ahead of time (3 hours to a week). Prep time takes about an hour. Then when you need a hot snack, you just grab the pre-made bollos straight from the freezer and deep fry.

about 8 servings

Meat Filling

1/2 lb ground beef
Adobo meat seasoning to taste
1 Tbsp minced carrot
1 Tbsp minced onion
1 Tbsp minced red pepper
4 small Spanish green olives with pimento, minced
1 Tbsp tomato paste
splash white wine
Salt and pepper

Mix Adobo seasoning into raw ground beef in the same quantity you would salt. Marinate for 3-12 hours if possible. Saute meat until cooked, and then add the rest of the veggies, olives and tomato paste. Once the veggies are starting to lose their crunch, splash the pan with white wine and let the alcohol steam off. Taste, and add salt and pepper if necessary.

Yuca Paste

4 cups grated Yuca (1-2 roots)
1/2 cup Country Crock Shedd's Spread
2 eggs
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar

Cut off the yuca’s black skin. Grate the hard, white inside on the smallest holes of a box grater. Add enough Country Crock so that the mixture turns into a paste. Sprinkle with sugar and salt, in equal proportion, the same amount you would salt potato. Mix in eggs.

Assembly

Put two heaping spoonfuls (about a half cup) of yuca mixture in the center of a square of plastic wrap. Spread the yuca roughly into a square, about 1/2" thick. Put a tsp or two of meat in the center keeping the edges clear. Fold the plastic wrap in half, connecting the edges of the yuca mixture so the meat becomes invisible inside. Roll the saran wrap into a log. Twist the ends of the plastic wrap to firm up the log. You should have what looks like a fat, short uniform yuca-dog, with no meat filling showing. Make more until ingredients run out. Store logs, wrapped individually in Saranwrap, in the freezer.

Deep Frying

flour for dusting
about 1/2 gallon peanut oil

Heat enough peanut oil in a pot so that when you put the bollos in they'll float freely. Heat oil on medium (if you have a candy thermometer, 250 degrees F worked perfectly). Take plastic wrap off frozen bollos, rub them lightly with all-purpose flour, and fry until very golden. (Don't crowd the pot - do batches if you need to). Dry on paper towel. Eat right away. When oil cools, strain and store in refrigerator for re-use.

***I want to know how this recipe works for you! Please email me at lindsay@lindsaysterling.com with comments, questions or suggestions.

See how to do it

Thank you Tiffany Converse Photography

Where I Learned This

I learned to cook bollos at La Bodega Latina, a Latin market and deli at 863 Congress St., Portland, ME. My teacher was 23-year-old Jasmin, who grew up in New York learning to cook with her Dominican mother and relatives. She has been working for her step-brother, Juan, at La Bodega for as long as she can remember. They sell bollos and other fried snacks like empanadas and chicharrones most days 11am-4pm.

Order Special Ingredients

Since I'm already hunting these ingredients down, I'd be happy to mail you the things you might not be able to find easily at your local store. But I really encourage you to find your local Latin marketplace -- it's like travel without the plane tickets!

Special ingredients you'll need for bollos

Yuca Root	$5.00
Adobo Seasoning	$4.00

The Story

Buns of Steel, Meet Buns of Yuca

A Dominican fried treat whomps health-nut-ism.

The sunshine yellow trim of the La Bodega Latina, a corner store and deli geared toward Spanish speaking immigrants, peaks out above the eight foot pile of dirty snow along Congress St. I’m a 3rd generation American. My great grandparents were Poles. I enter. The Guatemalan young men inside, wearing low jeans and sweatshirts, look wide-eyed with surprise at me, a tall, lean white lady with her young daughter. My gut tightens, but I push through their gazes.

What are these? I ask the thick-lipped, voluptuous young cashier who’s come to dole out what I request from the heated glass deli case. I was curious about the things that looked like short, fat corn dogs.

She says something slippery and fast, boyosdayyooka.

“Pollo?” I say lamely with my old Wisconsin-high-school Spanish.

She shakes her head and says it again more slowly: boyohs day yooka.

Still, no comprendo. “Would you mind writing it down?” I ask, holding out my little spiral journal.

Mildly put out, she takes the pen. In beautiful handwriting I see what would become the object of my fascination for the next month: “BOLLOS DE YUCA.” I’d be up late nights, measuring the temperature of my peanut oil and scrambling around online trying to find recipes. The one I gleaned from a later cooking session with Jasmin, the cook at La Bodega, was missing something. I’d done just what Jasmin had showed me. Peel the thick, black waxy skin off the yuca root with a knife, grate the hard, white core on the fine holes of a box grater, add a ton of margerine, an egg, salt and sugar, and then roll the meat into the center and deep fry. But my bollos were exploding in the oil and turning black.

Now that I know that this thing is basically a meat-filled donut, I get why that Saturday my five-year-old daughter gobbled up nearly the whole thing before I intercepted the last bite. The crispy, golden outside gives way to a soft, steamy layer of deliciousness (a little bit more chewy than fried potato) and inside, magically seasoned ground beef.

We gobbled up more treats right there, including empanadas (basically, deep fried pie) and chicharrones, these incredibly crispy, chewy, deep fried pork belly ribs sprinkled with fresh lime. You know what’s more shocking than how much fat we consumed? For the rest of the day, I felt better physically than I have since high school. I’m 34. It was like I was a hunter-gatherer who’d just feasted on mastadon. Ah, safe from starvation for a while. A no worries kind of day.

During my hunt to solve my little explosion problem, I came upon translation of bollos de yuca online. It was “BUNS OF YUCA.” Suddenly BUNS OF STEEL, an exercise video advertised endlessly on TV in the eighties featuring a high-cut workout suit and bare, sweaty, incredibly fit butt cheeks, leaped out of the blue of my memory like a lion whose territory was being tested. I never did use that video, but I am a health nut to this day, exercising five days a week, and usually steering clear of fats other than olive oil.

My mom used to tell me to do what feels right. I say buns of steel aren’t really that sexy anyway. I think my husband, myself, and even those Gautemalan onlookers all prefer a little jiggle in these here buns.