Margarita's Recipes for the Grill



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marga@lacabe.com

I'm Argentinian so I grew up eating asado every weekend. For the first seven years of my life, we did so at my grandfather's large quinta in the outskirts of La Plata. He had a quincho, a gazebo with a thatched roof, in the back of the property, with a huge grill and a large, cement picnic table. Afterwards, my parents bought their own little weekend home in City Bell, and it came with a simple, yet effective, stone grill in one corner. When my family sold my grandfather's quinta, we brought the cement picnic table over.

My father would make asado de tira (short ribs), vacío (flank steak) and chorizos every weekend. While he liked morcillas, nobody else did so he'd never get them. I also don't remember him ever getting molleja, sweetbreads, because it was very expensive - he was so delighted when he came to the US and found it was very cheap here. Fortunately, even he didn't like chinchulines, small intestines, a common dish at Argentine barbecues. Later, when a butcher shop near our house started selling chicken in pieces, he also would buy chicken legs for me - my mother, who grew up having to clean chickens given as pay to her father, a doctor, would go nowhere near any type of poultry.

When we came to the US, my father bought himself a grill and continued with his practice of grilling on weekends - a couple of decades later, as my father grew old and everyone left the home, my brother took over that weekly duty. When we went down to Los Angeles to visit my parents, we'd often have asado at my brother's home.

I, however, am not much of an asadora. I did get a BBQ grill soon after we bought our home, but as we couldn't find Argentine beef cuts in the Bay Area, I never even tried making these. I think that I still associated grilling with masculinity and I fruitlessly expected my husband to take over the grill at some point, but he doesn't cook and didn't grow up in a grilling household, so he's never had any interest. Our house, moreover, is not really well set up for grilling. The kitchen is at the front of the house - but the patio is all the way to the back, and going back and forth can become pretty impractical.

Still, over the years I have done my fair share of grilling, and while most often it's just a matter of setting a hunk of meat on the grill, these are some of the recipes I've made. Note that even after two and a half decades, I still haven't figured out how to grill chicken.

Appetizers

Beef

Pork

Ribs

Tenderloin

Lamb

Chicken

Parts

Skewers

Seafood

Sauces and Marinades for grilled meats

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