Asado

Ingredients

• Beef short ribs — cut across the bone2.5 kg
• Flank or skirt1.5 kg
• Chorizo sausages800 g
• Morcilla500 g
• Coarse salt100 g
• Parsley — for the chimichurri80 g
• Garlic8 clove
• Dried oregano2 tbsp
• Red wine vinegar100 ml
• Olive oil200 ml
• Chilli flakes1 tbsp
• Bread — to serve500 g

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Light the firewood to one side of the grate and let it burn down to embers, about forty minutes.

   45 min

2. 2

   Mix the parsley, garlic, oregano, vinegar, oil and chilli flakes; the chimichurri needs an hour to stand.

   15 min

3. 3

   Rake a thin layer of embers under part of the grate and lay on the sausages; they go first.

   25 min

4. 4

   Salt the ribs coarsely all over and lay them bone side down over a moderate heat.

   10 min

5. 5

   Cook the ribs bone down for two hours, adjusting the embers so a palm can stay above the grate for seven seconds.

   125 min

6. 6

   Turn the ribs and give them forty minutes meat side down, for a crust.

   42 min

7. 7

   Add the flank for the last twenty minutes, rest the meat ten and serve it with the chimichurri.

   32 min

About the dish

The embers come from firewood rather than briquettes, and they sit beside the meat rather than under it: the asador rakes them under the grate as needed. He controls the heat, not a timer.

Coarse sal parrillera is the only seasoning. Marinades in Argentina read as a sign of poor meat: good beef does not need them.

The order is fixed: sausages and offal first as a starter, then ribs, and the large cuts at the end. Asado is not a dish but a sequence four hours long.

Worth knowing

• — Do not pierce the meat with a fork or turn it often. Every puncture lets juice out, and frequent turning stops a crust forming.
• — Salt generously and half an hour ahead. Coarse salt will not oversalt: the excess simply falls onto the embers.
• — Chimichurri never goes on meat over the fire. Its vinegar burns and turns bitter; the sauce is served separately at the table.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

880 kcal

Protein

62 g

Fat

62 g

Carbs

18 g

More from Argentina

• Argentinian empanadas — Pastries of chopped beef, onion and egg. The filling is chilled cold, or the dough will not seal.
• Chimichurri — A sauce of parsley, oregano, garlic and vinegar. A knife rather than a blender: texture matters more than smoothness.
• Alfajores — Two crumbly cornflour biscuits joined with dulce de leche and rolled in coconut.