Asado

Asado is a cooking technique in which meat, mostly beef, is slowly exposed to the heat of embers or open fire, and also the social gathering built around it. It is one of the most characteristic features of Southern Cone cooking, especially in Argentina and Uruguay.

History

Cooking over open fire is far older than any organised cuisine, and the asado as practised today in the Southern Cone is associated above all with rural life on the plains and in Patagonia, where gauchos cooked meat over a slow, steady fire for several hours. Accounts describe meat hung from iron crosses set into the ground beside the fogón, or skewered on a spit.

Over time the technique adapted to towns and cities, where the horizontal grill and charcoal, which produces a faster fire, became standard. The most respected asadores reject grills with a lid, since they alter the normal cooking process.

The method spread to other countries in Latin America, including Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico, where it took on local forms. Open-fire traditions also exist in Europe, such as the fish skewers of the Valencian coast in Spain.

Culture

In Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay the asado is far more than a way of cooking: it is a social gathering organised around the grill, in the quincho or in the countryside. The asador, self-taught or professional, watches the doneness so that the meat is cooked to the desired point, seared outside and a little less done inside. At many homes the meat is served with Russian salad, chimichurri or salsa criolla, and traditionally women prepared the salads.

Regional variants are very varied: lamb cooked on a stake or cross in Patagonia, asado con cuero in gaucho tradition, asado al palo in southern Chile, or asado al disco and asado al horno de barro in rural areas. In Brazil, the rodizio style of skewered meats differs considerably from the Argentine asado.