Asado 101

I guess it was pretty obvious that we didn't know what we were doing. 

After three nights of lentils and pasta, my friend Joseph and I had decided to buy a hunk of beef and make ourselves a\ Argentine style asado, or barbecue. It seemed a fitting way to mark a successful backpacking trip in the mountains of Cordoba province.

Per my carnivorous brother's advice, given some months earlier, I rubbed the olive oil and black pepper into the meat. It felt kind of gross. Joseph found some charcoal and busied himself building a little pyramid of briquettes on the huge grill. We had no lighter fluid, so we decided that white gas would have to suffice. 

The first time we tried to light the charcoal, we hadn't added enough gas. Our fire quickly flickered out, so we added more gas. This time we added too much--a giant fireball nearly took off our eyebrows--but the flames did not last. What were we going to do? The salad was made, and the wine had been opened. We needed that meat.

A pair of Argentines had been watching our confused attempts bemusedly from the other side of the open-air kitchen. It was time to ask for help, manhood (so closely linked to the grill, and in so many countries) be damned. I turned around.

"We don't know what we're doing," I said. "But from what I've seen, cada argentino es un experto del asado. Will you teach us?" 

Our new friends jumped up and busied themselves finding wood and sawdust, moving our charcoal to a different part of the grill, and sizing up our cut of beef. ("Not very big" was the verdict.) They stacked wood, charcoal, paper, and sawdust carefully, explaining how everything was to work as they went. I was not exactly surprised to learn that we had done approximately everything wrong.

We offered our new friends wine: they declined, explaining that last night had been a little too wild. Fifteen minutes later, one said, "Actually, could you pass me a glass? The smell of the meat is making me thirsty." His two friends quickly assented. I was starting to wish we had bought two bottles; I should have remembered that everything is shared in Argentina. We should have planned for that.

Where our fires had briefly bellowed and quickly faded, the Argentines' provided a steady supply of perfect coals to cook our too-small steak. Our friends did not disappear after the grill was prepped. Instead, they told us to sit down; they would handle the grilling too. I protested: we didn't want to inconvenience them, and plus, I wanted to learn how to make a good asado. 

"Honestly, you're kind of hopeless," came the response. "Just enjoy it." 

We piled salad on our plates and ate the beef as small, perfectly cooked bits were delivered to us. It was the opposite of the American steak experience: there was no single hunk of rapidly-cooling, irregularly cooked meat on my plate. Instead, every bite was hot and just the right amount of pink all the way through. 

Joseph and I had hoped to eat an early dinner, but as our asado failures compounded with lengthening conversation with our parilla tutors, we realized that it would not be an early night. We finished the dishes just after midnight: right on schedule for Argentina.