Churrasco (Gaucho Grilled Steak)

History

Churrasco here is a plain, exacting thing: a rectangular cut about three centimeters thick from the sirloin or rump of beef or lamb, trimmed of skin, sinew, and fat, washed, dried, seasoned with only the lightest touch of salt, and pounded with a pestle. It is laid over a bed of live, well-blown coals; a second bed is kept burning alongside, and the moment the edges begin to pale the steak is flipped onto the fresh coals, raw side down, any clinging embers brushed away. It is served without sauce, which the contributor says would rob the meat of the flavor the direct fire gives it. She opens by distinguishing this 'true churrasco' from the half-grilled, bloody scraps sometimes sold under the name, and credits the dish to the people who, she writes, hold the secret of preparing the meat: the gauchos.

That credit sits on solid ground. Churrasco is the Portuguese and Spanish word for grilled beef across South American and Iberian cooking, and in the Río de la Plata it was the gauchos and other rural people who relished fresh beef cooked this way, so bound to it that they were said to live largely on churrasco and mate. The word itself comes from churrar, of onomatopoeic origin — the sizzle and scorch of meat on the fire — and Portuguese borrowed it from Spanish, so the name belongs to the whole peninsula and its American offshoots rather than to one plain. In that sense the gauchos did not invent fire-grilled meat, which is older and more widespread than any single people; what they made was this particular culture of fresh beef seared fast over coals and eaten without adornment.

And that culture is younger than it looks, because the beef is not native to the Pampas. There were no cattle on those plains before the Spanish brought them — the Iberian herds are held to have reached the future Argentine territory around 1556 and Buenos Aires by its refounding in 1580, then multiplied so freely on the open, fertile grassland that they were counted in the tens of millions within a couple of centuries. The gaucho grilling a few hunks of meat over a quick fire at midday is the origin story told for the asado as a social ritual and for the country's devotion to beef, but the animal at the center of it arrived with the colonizers. The recipe preserves the technique faithfully — the light salt, the twin beds of coals, the single decisive turn, the refusal of sauce — while naming no place beyond the contributor's Buenos Aires and folding beef and lamb into one method; the gauchos it honors were working a herd that Europe had set loose on the grass.

Ingredients

• 1 cut beef or lamb sirloin or rump, cut rectangular about 3 cm thick
• salt

Instructions

1. Cut the meat rectangular, about 3 cm thick, from the sirloin or rump of beef or lamb.
2. Trim off skin, sinews, and fat; wash in cold water and dry carefully.
3. Season very lightly with salt and pound the surface with a mortar pestle.
4. Lay it over a bed of live, well-blown coals, and build a second bed of live coals alongside.
5. When the edges begin to pale, turn it quickly onto the fresh coals, raw side down, brushing away any coals stuck to it; this brief moment brings it to the point.
6. Serve without sauce.