What Is Asado? An Argentine Afternoon
Asado is both the meal and the method of cooking it, and it is a social event measured in hours. What actually happens, in what order, and how long it takes.
Asado is two things at once: the meal, and the method of cooking it over wood or charcoal. An Argentine will use the same word for the fire, the grill, the cuts of meat and the gathering around them.
And it is a gathering. Asado is a social event measured in hours, not a barbecue measured in minutes. If you have been invited to one and you are picturing burgers, a cold drink and home by three, adjust. You are being invited to spend an afternoon.
The fire is the whole thing
An asado starts long before any meat appears. Someone lights a fire, with wood or charcoal, and then everyone waits for it to burn down to embers. Gas is not used, and the distinction is not snobbery. Wood and charcoal give slow, radiant, uneven heat, and the entire technique is built on cooking gently for a long time rather than searing hard and fast.
Waiting for those coals takes a while. Nobody minds, because the waiting is not an obstacle to the event. It is the event. People arrive during it, wine gets opened during it, and the first conversations of the day happen with everyone standing near the fire doing nothing in particular.
If you take one idea away from this page, take that one. Nothing about an asado is in a hurry, and hurrying it is the only real way to do it wrong.
The parrilla and the asador
The parrilla is the grill itself: a grate over a bed of embers, usually with the height adjustable, and often with a side firebox where a separate fire burns so that fresh coals can be raked underneath as needed. Argentine homes are built with them. So are the restaurants, and the word parrilla also means a steakhouse, which is how you will meet it on a menu.
The asador is the person cooking. This is a role, not a chore. One person runs the fire, decides when the coals are right, chooses the order, and says when things are ready. You do not take over, you do not flip anything, and you do not suggest the meat looks done. You can stand next to them with a glass and talk, which is more or less the point.
What comes off the grill, and in what order
Things arrive in stages, and the sequence has its own logic: small and quick first, large and slow last.
| Stage | What it usually is |
|---|---|
| First | Chorizo — fresh pork sausage, often served split in bread as a choripán |
| Then | Morcilla — blood sausage, soft and rich |
| Alongside | Provoleta — a thick disc of provolone melted right on the grill, with oregano |
| Next | Achuras — offal, typically sweetbreads (mollejas) and chitterlings (chinchulines) |
| Last | The main cuts of beef |
That opening round is not an appetizer in the American sense. It is a way of feeding people while the serious meat is still an hour away.
The cuts you will meet
- Asado de tira — beef short ribs cut across the bone. The name the whole meal is built around, and the most characteristic thing on the grill.
- Vacío — flank, with a layer of fat and membrane that protects it while it cooks slowly. Chewy in the good way.
- Entraña — skirt steak. Thin, quick, intensely beefy, and the cut I would pick first if I were only allowed one.
- Bife de chorizo — a thick strip steak, despite the name having nothing to do with sausage.
Meat is generally cooked further through than a steakhouse in the US would serve it, and it is salted with coarse salt and very little else. If you are asked how you want it, jugoso is juicy and a punto is medium. Asking for it rare is not an insult, but it is not the local idea of the cut at its best either.
Chimichurri
Chimichurri is the sauce: parsley, garlic, oregano, chili flakes, vinegar and oil, mixed and left to sit. It is not a marinade and it is not a barbecue sauce. It goes on at the table, in small amounts, on the cuts that want it.
You will often see a second bowl of salsa criolla, chopped tomato, onion and pepper in vinegar. Between the two, plus bread and a simple salad, that is the entire supporting cast. There is no side-dish arms race here.
What to bring if you are invited
Wine, or something for dessert. In Mendoza the wine part is easy — see my wine pages if you want to turn up with something local and good rather than something generic.
What not to do: do not bring meat unless you were asked to, do not arrive exactly on time expecting to eat immediately, and do not offer to help at the grill. Offering to help in the kitchen is fine and normal. The fire is somebody’s job.
Also, eat the first round. People notice if you hold back waiting for the steak.
How long it really takes
Plan for the afternoon. The fire needs a good while to reach usable coals, the staged service stretches the eating over another couple of hours, and then there is the part afterwards where everybody sits at the table with the plates still out, talking. That last part is not the end of the asado. It is included.
The original point stands: calling it “a barbecue” misses what it is. A barbecue is a cooking method with food at the end of it. An asado is a way of spending a day that happens to involve extremely good beef.
If you are visiting rather than being invited into someone’s home, a good parrilla restaurant will give you the meat but not the afternoon. Order the asado de tira, get a bottle of Malbec, and do not book anything for two hours afterward. I have written up where I actually send people in my guide to eating in Mendoza.
Get to a family asado if you possibly can, though. It is a completely different experience from a restaurant steak, and it is the one that explains the country.