Culinary Adventure to Bolivia for Pique a lo Macho

Pique a lo Macho or Pique Macho is a traditional Bolivian dish that consists of meats and peppers over papas fritas (fried potatoes). The meaning of this dish is to imply "Heat (spicy) for the tough man" referring to the hot peppers. When visiting some of my husband's friends in Bolivia a few years ago, I had the opportunity to try the interesting yet, delicious dish. There is no crazy ingredients in it but, the order in which it is served, makes you wonder. I obtained this recipe in Bolivia and have made just a few changes to it. I hope you enjoy.

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Ingredients:............................................................................Changes We Made

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French Fries (homemade, or from frozen).........................We baked our fries

Boiled Eggs (one for each serving to go on top)

Hot Peppers (Green or red).....................................We used mild peppers instead of hot

Red onion
Chopped Beef...............................................................We used Stew meat

Hot dogs or sausage.....................................................We used smoked turkey sausage (precooked)

Cumin to taste.............................................We also added beef bullion, paprika, and chili powder

Garlic to taste.................................We used 1-2 gloves of minced garlic in olive oil to brown meat

Mayonnaise and ketchup (traditional but, optional)...................We also added hotsauce

Cooking Tool of the Week: Egg Slicer- This week, we would like to show you our cooking tool which helped make this meal a little faster. The egg slicer cuts perfect slices of eggs without the mess and keep them together until you spread them out.

Perfect Slices and you can let you kids do the cutting!


You might think, I don't eat enough boiled eggs to make it worth while. Well most egg slicers are pretty heavy duty and can slice strawberries, bananas, olives, mushrooms, pear, peach, or apple halves (usually without the skin), and many other soft foods.

Brown Stew meat and add cut up sausage or hot dogs and cook until semi-done. (It will finish it's cooking process when the vegetables are added. You don't want your meat to be too tough so, if there is a little red showing in your beef, when you add the vegetables, that is fine.

(Our change was to brown the meat in a little olive oil and minced garlic and then add beef bullion in a little water after meat is semi-cooked)

After meat is cooked, put all peppers, onions, and seasonings in with the meat and cook until desired tenderness.

In Bolivia, the traditional way to to serve Pique Macho is over french fries, a cut up boiled egg on top, and smothered in mayonnaise and ketchup (I didn't smoother anything on this one). You usually get a side of rice as well. We will eat ours over french fries or over rice.

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Has Anyone Tried Bolivian Food or Do You Own an Egg Slicer?

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