I am not a botanist. Nor do I have a particular understanding of nature. I know that trees grow and that occasionally they get chopped down and used as firewood to cook some meat and heat houses. There’s not a lot more to it than that, as far as I am concerned. But this entry is about Quebracho, a generic name given to a few tree species native to Argentina that are used by the most exacting of parrilleros.
The term Quebracho is a corruption of quebrar (to break) and hacha (axe), and refers to a collection of very hard woods that may or may not be genetically related. The term “ironwood” is used in English in a similar way in fact. The images of cracking axes and trees made of iron should provide a clue to the how these woods burn when used in an asado. If newspaper is a 0 in a scale of 0 to 10 in terms of hardness, quebracho is most definitely an 11.
It is important to note that of the entire Quebracho class, it is Quebracho blanco (Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco) and Quebracho colorado (Schinopsis lorentzii and Schinopsis balansae variants) that are most commonly used for parrillas. Predictably and to add to the confusion, these two are of different species and not related at all. Each are extremely dense and hard.
Credit – Wikipedia
I’ve used Quebracho colorado a few times, and each time I’ve been amazed by how dense it is. When cut into pieces of about 20cm by 20cm (good luck chopping them yourself without breaking your axe) that are manageable for the parrilla they are still very heavy, easily passing a kilogram each. They take hours to break down into coals, but do so reliably, with a lot of heat and very little ash. This is important particularly for parrillas not only using wood, but also serving a large number of guests. If they were to use lighter firewood they would need enormous quantities and would spend a great deal of time restocking their fire rather than managing the meat on the grill. The flipside is of course that lighting a fire with Quebracho is difficult and generating coals requires some time and expertise. Readers familiar with the firewood versus coals debate will recall that anybody using firewood is probably a bit of a asado nerd; using Quebracho makes you an asado ultranerd.
But the fact that the ultranerds use it doesn’t take away from the fact that Quebracho is part of the intricate details of an asado. Much like the different cuts of meat have their own flavours, identities and secrets, using different kind of wood will drastically change the way that the fire burns. The fire itself is fundamental to the asado, and adapting to how every specific fire burns is part of any parrilero’s job. Doing an asado is an exercise in judgment, as the parrillero measures fire, coals and meat as well as his or her own alcohol intake along with keeping hungry and rowdy guests at bay. Using Quebracho is perhaps a guilty pleasure, as it isn’t cheap, but if you can appreciate the satisfaction of building a fire to cook your dinner, you can certainly appreciate the novelty of using some something capable of breaking axes to grill that delicate bife de lomo just right.
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