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The Southern Cone · Volume 25, The Río de la Plata Table

Asado a la parrilla

The Pampas and the campo

Asado a la parrilla, a mixed grill of short ribs, flank and skirt steak cooked slowly over embers: a wide iron parrilla grate holding three cuts of beef side by side, dark bronzed short ribs still on the bone, a thick flank steak with a deeply charred crust.

Illustration

Time
2 hours 30
Researched
Researched from 179 sources in the brief

The technique itself, rather than a single dish, and the one every other grilled dish in this chapter assumes. Gauchos originally cooked whole animals staked to a cross or spit, asado a la cruz, over an open fire rather than a flat grill; the modern parrilla, a metal grate over embers, sometimes rigged with a pulley to raise and lower it relative to the heat, became the standard household and restaurant method later.

As tradition built it

Serves 6 to 8. About 2 to 2.5 hours from lighting the fire.

Ingredients

Method

  1. Build the fire with quebracho charcoal, or a UK charcoal substitute, roughly 50 minutes before you plan to cook, until you have an even, well-aerated bed of red embers with no active flame.
  2. Bring the meat to room temperature, at least 3 to 4 hours for the larger cuts, and salt it 10 to 15 minutes before it goes on.
  3. Place the tira de asado bone side down first. Leave it undisturbed until juice rises visibly to the surface, then flip and finish roughly 25 minutes on the boneless side.
  4. Place the vacío over constant medium heat and cook roughly 40 minutes per side, unhurried, letting the connective tissue render.
  5. Place the entraña last, over the hottest part of the fire, and cook 10 to 15 minutes per side, a single flip, judging by thickness.
  6. Rest each cut briefly off the fire before carving, and serve with chimichurri and choripán alongside, both below.

What a modern chef changes

Dry-ageing as the deliberate modern lever, and a Big Green Egg run to hold the parrilla's own discipline rather than chase it

Rungs 1 and 2

Method

  1. Dry-age the vacío and tira de asado for 7 to 10 days in a dedicated fridge shelf held at 2 to 4°C with good airflow, wrapped loosely rather than sealed, before the cook. This concentrates flavour the way Argentina's own top parrillas now do deliberately, rather than treating age as an accident of storage. Rung 2.
  2. Build the coal bed and let it settle fully before the grate goes on, then use the Egg's vents to hold a steady temperature through the whole cook rather than adjusting constantly. The parrilla's real technology is time and restraint, not a specific grill design, and an indirect setup reproduces it closely. Rung 1.
  3. Treat each cut on its own terms, not on a single timer. Move the entraña to the hottest zone and the vacío to the gentlest, exactly as the tradition method does, rather than cooking everything at one heat because it is more convenient to manage.
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