What's in an Argentine BBQ? | We Tasted 7 Asado Meats

If you like meat, then take a seat as we bring you into the world of Argentine asados, a cultural tradition deeply rooted in grilling, smoking, and preparing meat. Being from Texas, we are very familiar with meat-loving culture and there's a lot of similarities between the way that Texans and Argentinians prepare meat, first cooked over a fire and then exposed to hours of smoke to get that deep smoky flavor. We have a whole month in Buenos Aires, plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with traditional Argentinian cuisine. It's just incredible. Locals helped us determine the six cuts always found in an Argentine asado. First, entranha, which is skirt steak. Second, vacio, which is flank steak. Third, un ojo de bife or ribeye. Fourth, bife de chorizo, which is a New York strip steak. Fifth, lomo, which is tenderloin. And finally, asado, which are beef short ribs. But we didn't stop there. We added one bonus category for choripan, which is the traditional grilled and butterflied Argentine sausage served on bread. With our list in hand, we ventured to the annual Buenos Aires Food Fest to get our first meat of the trip. There was a one mile walk down the road and our little toddler's endurance had begun to grow living in the city for a couple of weeks. But she was eager to get her hands on some food. Churros, chocolate, breads and burgers. It all looked great. But we live near Oklahoma. We were here for Argentine meat. And we hoped after glimpsing this medieval torture chamber for beef ribs, that we could check asado off our list. But it had to cook all day. Fortunately, we still had a few options. We could choose entranha, ojo de bife or the choripan. So I'm not actually entirely sure what we just ordered. Skirt steak. Skirt steak. We tucked into our first cut of meat and crossed entranha off the list. Everyone enjoyed a bite and it was a good start. But we weren't wowed. Okay, we made a mistake in our next pursuit. We wanted steak, specifically bife de chorizo. And we went to the most hyped restaurant in all of Buenos Aires, La Cabrera. What kind of meat do you want? Steak? Oh, you want the chicken instead? You want both? La Cabrera is a beautiful restaurant. And it seems really promising on the surface. But we confirmed an already learned lesson through our experience here. If you are in a non English speaking country, and you go to a restaurant that has English signs and or menus and or a line out the door to get in, you need to run away because it is probably an overpriced tourist trap with unremarkable food, as was the case here. So we ordered the bife de chorizo, the large one, and I was a little confused because I've seen it called bife ancho and bife de chorizo. Turns out it is called bife de chorizo here. That's what we ordered. And it is a New York strip steak. Oh my gosh, the beef is a little bit tough. Honestly, we chewed it, swallowed it and politely left after paying. Of course, this was one of our most expensive and least impressive meals. But it was followed by a tremendous victory the next day. The following day, we ventured the farthest we would travel for meat to Barrio Matadero. That's Ma-Ta-Der-Os, which means slaughterhouse. This is the meatpacking district of Buenos Aires, a fitting place for our relentless pursuit of carne and home to Feria Matadero. This is really a unique place because it's clearly not a tourist fair, but one for locals and mostly for Argentinians. And the main draw is the folkloric dances and people come donning traditional clothes to match. Our toddler loved joining in on the fun. After a little bit of culture, it was time to return to meat. We had seen vasio available and thought it may be the next off our list. That is, until we saw this. El Reino del Choripan, which means the kingdom of choripan. How could we not try choripan from the kingdom itself? We ordered one giant chori, threw on the salsa Criolla, and set off to feast. He's excited. Don't know that this is the most nutritious lunch we could be getting. This is mondo. Wow. Okay. Super, super good. Toppings are great. Sausage is crispy. It's fantastic. It really is. There you go. What do you think? The crispiness helps. All right. If I don't think too much about it, I'm okay with it. Is it grease or is it the sauce coming off? Open up your mouth really There we go. I think it was $2.40. Pretty great value. Pretty great value. And with that, we checked off choripan and we were off on our next quest. We are at the San Telmo market. It's unbelievably crowded here on the Sundays because they're also having a fair at the same time that they're having this market, which is every day. You The food is reasonably priced, incredibly authentic to Argentina and is absolutely delicious. All right, this looks pretty delicious. We're going to tuck into the meat now. All right. Ready? It's so good. The grill master called the Asador was so kind to our family. He was constantly dishing out free little appetizers for our baby. And kept coming over to take pictures of her. I actually think it's better than the other day, even more tender. Great father's day. All right, meat lovers buckle up because today is the biggest day. Since 2016, the country of Argentina has closed down the widest street in the world, Avenida Nueve de Julio, to create the biggest national cook-off the world has ever seen, Campeonato Federal del Asado, the national championship of grilling. The 26 states of Argentina, plus the autonomous city of Buenos Aires, each send their two best asadores to compete in the national hunger games of meat preparation. We had three cuts of meat left on our list, but we knew we could get two at this festival for certain. Every competitor had to and most of the 100 plus food stalls were offering both. This is truly the most incredible food festival I have ever been to in my entire life. They are all cooking just every kind of a meat that you can imagine. We've seen chicken, we've seen they're cooking butternut squashes in ashes. They have a full cow split wide open on pineapples. It's unbelievable. Two booths supposedly per competing states, but then there's also all these booths that are almost like an international cohort. There's Peruvian food and Lebanese food and Israeli food and so many different kinds here. It's so cool. Do you want to try Basio or Asado first? Which one? Basio. Okay. We just did about three laps because we could not find Basio. I think this one has it. I think it's supposed to be good. We're going to try it. Azza requested that we try Basio first. We were very concerned because they put a big old piece of what looked like American cheese on it, so we feel like that's probably not a good start, but the rest of it looks pretty interesting. We'll see. I thought it tasted really similar to the Entranha one. I mean it's really good, super tender, nice flavor. With Basio off the list, we had one more mission at this incredible festival. Eat some Asado. We weren't going with just any booth for this one. We really wanted what we had been searching for the whole time, the perfect Argentine sandwich. The state of Santa Fe won the 2017 Campeonato Federal del Asado, supposedly backed by their incredible Asado, and we figured these proven would be our best shot at the sandwich we wanted. This is everything I dreamed of when we were talking about coming to this event. It looks really lean, like they pulled all the fat out. It's tender. It's all pulled apart and loaded up with chimichurri sauce. Oh my god. That's the best one we've had? So good. You've got to have a bite of this, man. It is so good. You actually like it? It's lean, which I love. It said it had been cooked for eight hours. I believe it. It has veggies on it. It looks like there's peppers and onions and carrots and eggplant. There's chimichurris to die for. That event was incredible. Every state in Argentina came to compete in one giant meat cook-off. 500,000 people were there. This event was so big that when we came back to our apartment and opened the windows to get some fresh air, five kilometers away, we could smell the smoke from the grills. We are now enjoying our final meat, which is the lomo or the beef tenderloin. This is the meat that we cook the most often at home, and we paired it with some very unusual pairings. They're serious about their meat here. I think the variety is striking. It seems to be more acceptable to actually serve meat with higher quantities of fat on it. The fat that we got here, I mean, it was a thick, inch-wide piece of unrendered white fat. It's, I don't know if that's typical, but it seemed like it was. What was your favorite meat that we had? Favorite one, I would say for me, was that asado sandwich. It was lean. It was well-flavored. There was actually some vegetables in there. Lo and behold, that's something you don't see often at an asado. I thought it was fantastic. The surprise one for me was the choripan. The choripan was actually really good. The sausage was crispy, and that, to me, was the only way that I think I would eat a fancy hot dog. It was fantastic. What's your favorite, baby? Really? It was really difficult for me between the asado sandwich and the choripan. I definitely did not expect the choripan to be at the top of my list. I was thinking the steaks, maybe the more expensive cuts, but the choripan was unbelievably good. So I would say the asado sandwich and the choripan are the top, and the best thing about that is they were two of the absolute cheapest ones that we had, if not the two cheapest that we ate the whole time. So, very affordable. We won't consider ourselves experts on the asado, but after seven cuts of meat from seven different vendors, we got to experience a wide variety of what an Argentinian asado has to offer. If there's one takeaway from this meaty adventure, it's that Argentina has a different cut for everyone. Your everyday steak sandwiches in the Atranha and Basio. A tender but rich steak in the Ojo de Bife. The classic lean cut in the Lomo. The hunk of meat with fat in the Bife de Chorizo. A melt-in-your-mouth pull-apart sandwich in the Asado Ribs. And finally, the classic Argentinian street food that can take on any of the other cuts with ease in the choripan. Something for everyone. After our experience, we feel that June is the time to experience the Argentine asado. The Campeonato Federal del Asado, the Buenos Aires Food Fest, Feria de Mataderos, and San Telmo Market are all accessible in June and within a few days of each other. We didn't know what to expect when we arrived in Argentina this year, but now we'll find ourselves wondering if we need to return each June.