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Cuban Stuffed Potato Balls

Deep fried balls of fluffy mashed potato with a spicy beef filling is just the touch of Cuban you'll need! So satisfying and they taste like Porto's famous Potato balls!
Course Appetizer
Cuisine Cuban
Keyword Potato Balls
Servings 20
Author Rookie With A Cookie

Ingredients

Beef Filling

  • ½ onion finely chopped
  • ½ red bell pepper finely chopped
  • 1 green bell pepper finely chopped
  • ½ lb ground beef
  • ½ of a jalapeno pepper
  • 1 ½ teaspoon ground cumin
  • ¾ teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • ½ teaspoon pepper
  • 6 tablespoon tomato sauce

Potato Balls

  • 5 potatoes salted, boiled and mashed
  • 2 eggs beaten with a tablespoon of water
  • ½ cup all purpose flour
  • 1 cup bread crumbs

Instructions

  • Boil potatoes in salted water until fork tender, Peel the skin and mash them well with a few tablespoon of milk at a time until very smooth and fluffy (it shouldn't be too sticky so be careful with the milk). Be sure to add enough salt to the mashed potato.
  • In a saucepan, sautee onion and peppers for a few minutes until soft.
  • Add the ground beef and stir until beef has brown.
  • Add in the spices and stir for a minute.
  • Next, pour in the tomato sauce and let simmer for five minutes. The meat filling won't have too much sauce because the liquid will make it difficult to stuff the potato balls.
  • To make the potato balls, take about two ounces of mashed potatoes and flatten it in the palm of your hand in a disk
  • Now take about a teaspoon of meat filling and place in the center of the flattened potato disk. Make sure you don't add too much filling because we need to wrap the filling inside the potato,
  • Slowly take the edges of the potato and pull them over the filling and smooth it into a ball. If your filling is not covered, just take a little bit of mashed potato and glue it onto the filling.
  • Now take each ball, dredge it in flour, dip it in egg and finally coat it generously in bread crumbs.
  • Once all the balls are coated, chill in the fridge for at least an hour to ensure they don't fall apart while frying. (You can also prep them a day in advance up to this point).
  • Once ready, deep fry them until golden brown.
  • Drain on paper towel and enjoy! This makes 20 medium-sized potato balls.

Notes

Don't prod the potato balls too much during frying because they might crack open a bit. A few of mine did open just a little bit because I was impatient.
Be sure not to add too much milk to the mashed potato at once. While forming the balls, the mashed potatoes shouldn't be too sticky (watch how I made this in the video).