Argentina Steak: Mollejas

In a way, the entire asado concept is an exercise in guilty pleasures. The repeatedly excessive amounts of meat, wine and good times shared with friends and family can only be described as an indulgence. Asados are not particularly friendly to waistlines and so are usually accompanied with some self-recriminations to do some exercise. Mañana, of course.

Now, in terms of guilty pleasures, you can’t get more shamefully guilty than tucking into some perfectly cooked molleja (sweetbreads in North America and the UK or ris de veau in France). While perhaps not for the slightly squeamish, mollejas have a unique taste that is down to the fact that it is in fact a gland and not muscle tissue like the other cuts that go on the parrilla. Of course, because this is Argentina, there are two different kinds of molleja, and there is contradictions within the folk wisdom about their anatomical differences. Both appear to be cut from different parts of the thymus gland, which is part of the immune system. Molleja de corazon (surrounding the heart), is perceived to be better for the grill as it is fattier and usually thicker so they stand up to the heat better. The molleja de garganta (from the throat) is thinner and naturally less fatty, and so is best for pan-frying with spring onions. Because our priorities run towards anything on the parrilla, the focus will be on the mollejas de corazon.

Just like with almost any other element of an Argentine asado, there are as many recipes for mollejas as there are parrilleros. However, with more than any other piece of meat that goes onto the grill, the recipes for molleja really do have a dramatic impact on the final product. The controversies about salting for example, rarely result in a bad steak. But because mollejas are naturally very strong tasting and fatty, need to be grilled basically well done and can take a long time to cook, the differing approaches will be apparent in the result.

Mollejas are served as starters and so their preparation is one of the first things that a parrillero will take care of. Some parrileros will salt and then throw them onto the grill as is, eventually butterflying them after browning them for some 30 minutes over some medium heat on each side. This will result in the most intensely flavoured molleja. Other approaches include boiling the mollejas in either water or milk along with lemon juice and salt from anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours, and either letting the mollejas cool before putting them onto the grill or alternatively pressing them and storing them in the fridge overnight. The thinking is that boiling the mollejas strips them both of their fattiness and their more potent flavours as well as pre-cooking them to an extent, making life easier for those running the grill. Again, the idea is to grill the mollejas over persistent medium heat and butterflying when golden on each side and adding more lemon juice as the molleja cooks.  The lemon juice makes an appearance because it naturally fits the flavor of the molleja. The variety of recipes reflects the fact that mollejas are difficult, that they are fickle and can let a parrillero down. I choose to boil them for 10 minutes before grilling, but I’ve had great mollejas done a variety of ways. They do need to be absolutely fresh as well, and preferably from a reliable butcher and the less fatty the better. Smart portenos will also be able to recommend which parrillas have great mollejas and where you should avoid them.

I have avoided defining the flavor of molleja because I find that they are unique and more or less incomparable. They are undoubtedly gamey, but not in the same way that duck or wild boar is. They absorb lemon juice and the smoke off the grill very well but also retain their specific flavor, which is like a savoury butter, kind of. It is certainly a delicacy, as it is pricey and hard to get right. It is also very filling. I remember that at one my asados I picked up 500 grams for a group of about six of us. That is plenty, especially because we also had some provoleta and chorizos as starters. Half of some pretty amazing molleja was left and a friend of mine refused to accept that it wasn’t going to be eaten so he polished it off. He was so full afterwards that he didn’t make it to the main steak portion and went to sleep at 9pm.

If you have a chance, try some mollejas. Be prepared to not like them, but there really isn’t anything else like it. And if you like them, you’ll join a very large group of those who sheepishly enjoying mollejas whilst scrambling to justify such a guilty pleasure. Try it. Join us.

 

Argentina Steak: Quebracho

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.

 

Argentina Steak: Dry-aging, Wet-aging, No-Aging

Not so long ago I spent a few months in New York City. It was a great few months, but I was also on a budget so I spent a lot of time adapting my Argentine tastes to my New York reality by looking at, rather than buying, wine and beef. My budget made me a discerning buyer but I also spent a lot of time being confused about why kinda gross-looking dry – aged hunks of beef were being advertised as liquid gold. To me, dry-aging seemed like a waste of good beef.

I distinctly recall wandering around one of those giant supermarkets with aisles full of organic, fair-trade or locally-sourced, carbon-neutral, trendy and overpriced products and stumbling upon the butcher’s section. Everything looked great but behind the butchers, cased in what I could only interpret as a shrine, sat an enormous and uncut piece of beef. I can’t remember the cut, but it was probably a sirloin of some kind. It had been dry-aged so it was gray instead of red, the marbled fat was more yellow than white, the exterior was covered in a kind of moss or mould and it was priced ridiculously more than all the other fresh cuts. The appearance alone made it easy for me to move on and save my money but I was intrigued. What could possibly be so great about this odd looking piece of beef? Fancy steakhouses that I looked at but never entered also talked up their dry-aged beef. What gives?

Dry-aging is a process by which large and quality cuts of beef are stored at near freezing temperatures for 15 to 28 days, during which moisture evaporates from the meat and natural enzymes act upon the meat. These two processes result in a greater concentration of flavor and greater tenderness respectively. Because it is costly, it is reserved for the best cuts such as sirloin and rib-eye.  To be fair, I’ve never tasted a dry-aged piece of steak so I can’t vouch for the process. Clearly, the fact that a market exists for dry-aged beef means that at least for a minority it’s worth their money. In Argentina dry-aging is essentially unheard of, and I’m willing to wager that it’s because the grass-fed beef has a greater natural tenderness and flavor. Furthermore, in Argentina the tendency is to seek out the freshest meat as the flavor is more vibrant. As such, the tendency is towards no-aging in Argentina. What you do find for premium quality beef is vacuum-packaging, which helps the beef to retain it’s freshness for longer, a process quite similar to wet-aging. See a write-up  from an actual butcher explaining the differences.

Whenever I go to my butcher here, who doesn’t dry-age his beef at all, I always pick out the brightest red cuts, with very white fat and with barely any odor. Precisely because that’s the best way to taste the beef and not any other effects of aging. This is what my experience has taught me, based on the kind of beef available in Argentina, which I consistently rate as the best. I will confess though that while in New York more than once I couldn’t resist the urge for red meat and I bought some (quite appropriately) New York Strip Steaks from Peter’s Meat Market in the Arthur Avenue Market in the Bronx. Highly recommended. And guess what? Not dry-aged.

 

Argentina Steak : Charcoal vs. Woodfire

Visitors to Buenos Aires who have seen parrilla al carbon signs on the steakhouses may have wondered what the carbon means. The basic principle behind any parrilla is that the heat driving the grilling process is not simply turned on and off or adjusted by a dial, but in fact intimately managed by the parrillero. This heat is more specifically generated by hot embers that are placed underneath a grill, upon which sits a wide of selections of choice cuts. The surrounding air and the grill is heated, which in turn slowly cooks the meat. The ways in which a parrillero controls those embers, their placement, and how often they are replaced as they cool, is worth its own blog post. Instead, this post will address where in fact the parrillero gets the embers from. More precisely, from a wood fire or by heating up charcoal, known in Argentina as carbon.

The choice is more important than would appear at first glance. Not only does it change the processes that the parrillero must have a handle on, but it also makes a difference in the taste of the finished meat. To understand this better, it’s important to understand what we’re talking about precisely.

Care for some Charcoal?

Anyone accustomed to cooking with charcoal barbecues would be roughly familiar with Argentine carbon grilling. Bags of the stuff can be bought at any supermarket and the process differs slightly based on the fact that in Argentina the fire generating the hot embers is usually kept separate from the grill itself, and the embers are moved over as needed. For me at least, the trickiest part of using charcoal is getting it lit and hot so that it starts to generate embers. Once they are lit, the coals will stay hot for hours and simply adding new coals to the fire will ensure a steady supply of new coals. Restaurants and apartment buildings in the city with a communal parrilla favor charcoal because it is usually reliable and it is easier to find than firewood. As the ad below demonstrates, the process of lighting the charcoal is not so straight forward. In this case the designated parrillero is missing and his clueless friends must start the fire without him. The last scene, at dawn, with an excessively smoky grill and the chorizos (sausages) barely ready exemplifies how specialized the parrilero function can be. Bear in mind that Hereford is a breed of cow and that Hereford wines are nothing to write home about, hence their amusing ad not about wine, but about asados.

Using fire to generate embers requires the parrillero to split his attention between the actual grilling and the fire itself, as in this case the hot embers must be produced by breaking down the firewood into hot coals. This requires more time, more patience, and more hard work and good judgment so that there are always enough hot embers when they are required. Bear in mind that the meat isn’t actually cooked by the fire itself, so it requires some careful maneouvering to extract the embers from the fire to then transfer them beneath the grill. The advantage though, is that the woodfire generates smokiness that gets into the meat in a way the carbon can’t and there’s nothing quite like using fire to cook your meal.

Or some woodfire?

Opinion, as is normally the case here, is divided about the relative merits and drawbacks of each. Those who favour wood fires will talk up the flavor but might seem a little pretentious to those preferring bags of charcoal, who in turn might be seen as taking shortcuts by the woodfire gang. At the end of the day, whichever method achieves best results is what matters. Great results can be achieved either way, but next time you have a chance, see if you can find out exactly how the meat was grilled. It’s one of the finer details of an asado, perhaps reserved for the obsessive types, but if you’re still reading you may just be one of them.

 

Argentina Steak: Salt & Asado

When it comes to seasoning the meats that are to be grilled, Argentina is about as unimaginative as it gets. No sauces, no rubs, no glazes. You might get some lemon juice and black pepper on pork dishes, but the only seasoning that is used is salt. The saving grace is that because the meat is so good, it’s never necessary nor even desirable to add any non-beef flavours. But that reliance on salt means that it is hugely important, in ways that perhaps are not apparent at first glance.

First off, the salt that is used in Argentina is rather unique in the size of its grains. Larger in diameter than table salt but smaller than sea salt, sal parrillera or entrefina is a happy medium that leaves the meat just right. The size of the salt grains is such that it draws out the water in the meat more effectively than the fine and thick grain versions, meaning that you effectively achieve the desired effect with less salt. It comes down how the grain of salt interacts with the meat – too large and you need a whole bunch of salt to cover the meat because of the reduced surface area, and if it’s fine you end up over salting because of the greater surface area to volume ratio. The sal parrillera allows you to salt the meat with the knowledge that you will get the desired effect of drawing the water out without salting excessively.

So, armed with your sal parrillera and once the meat has been trimmed, you spread the salt out evenly on the meat on both sides but without really rubbing it in. If the salt is simply sitting on top of the meat, that should be enough to have an effect, which will be a noticeable pooling of liquid around the pieces of salt. A large piece like a vacio or tira de asado will require a small handful of salt, roughly. A small handful of salt is admittedly a terrible unit of measurement, but this is the nature of doing an asado. It’s down to judging the piece of meat in front of you and how to best tackle it. Naturally, there will also be differences on how salty people prefer their meat.

Once you have salted your meat, you can now let it sit happily at room temperature for an hour or hour and a half before grilling. It shouldn’t need any more salt unless someone at the table has a major salt addiction. This, of course, is a contentious point.

In Argentina there are as many styles of asado as there are parrilleros. Some will salt immediately before grilling, some will let the salt sit for hours upon hours, some will knock the salt off before grilling, and some will only salt while the meat is already grilling. Each approach is probably based on tradition and inertia rather than any kind of food science or methodical system of testing results, but nonetheless you will hear everybody feverishly defend their own style as the best. The proof is in the pudding, and so I encourage you to try different approaches to see which you like best. As long as you are using sal parrillera, you can rest easy knowing that you are using the parrileros of Argentina best and only friend. And to be frank, that seems to work out just fine.