Argentina: Meat and Sweets
Our travels to Argentina taught us that Argentinians definitely know how to cook their meat. In empanadas, the meat is flavored with punches of flavors and spices. When you’re out on the ranch with the gauchos, sometimes all you need is just a little salt and pepper and some chimichurri sauce. In Buenos Aires, we tried various types of empanadas that are either baked or fried. Both versions are good, but the best empanada we had came out of a basket from someone working on a gaucho ranch. It was a beautifully fried, golden brown, and packed with a lot of carne. It was so juicy that we needed the napkin in order to catch the juices that spilled from the bottom corner when we bit into them. One of the best empanadas we had!
Also on the ranch we saw the gauchos grilling and it smelled GOOD. The gauchos ate a fairly healthy diet with little carbs and more meat and vegetables. In addition to the meats grilled above, they made salads using fresh vegetables, cabbages, tomatoes - whatever else you could find at the local market. We tried their version of steak and chicken but the must-try meats that were being grilled were the blood sausage and the Argentine chorizo.
The blood sausage is rich and hearty. You don’t eat the skin but you do eat the filling, and if you eat it with some bread or even your salad, it’s really very tasty. My favorite though was the chorizo. It’s not like the chorizo that we get back in the States. In fact, when you slice the chorizo you can see the pieces of cubed fat that’s rendered so nicely (crunchy on the outside and juicy on the inside). It’s one of the best and now we want to try making our own version of the Argentine chorizo!
The gauchos also prepared one of my most favorite desserts for me: flan! Even better was that they added dulce de leche to eat with it. Surprisingly, it wasn’t all that sweet and tasted really good. My inner child was so happy!
One of the desserts that we had was recommended to us by a local Argentinian woman that we sat next to on the plane. We tried to practice our Spanish with her and she was so appreciative that she told us about alfahores, a sweet biscuit dessert that’s very South American. It’s basically like a way better version of an Oreo with biscuit crackers and dulce de leche cream in between them. Sometimes they’re dipped in chocolate (like the one we tried) and sometimes the biscuits are left alone. In both versions, the dessert itself isn’t too sweet (despite the fact that dulce de leche is holding the cookies together) which is both our preference.
Argentina is such an amazing place that we want to go back and experience more of their food!