The Asador’s Notebook

Your Red Wine Is Too Warm and It's Ruining Your Asado
Your Red Wine Is Too Warm and It's Ruining Your Asado
Somebody hands me a glass of Malbec at a backyard party in Miami in July. The bottle has been standing on a table next to the grill for an hour.... Read more...
Empanadas: The Filling Gets Made the Night Before
Empanadas: The Filling Gets Made the Night Before
I'll give you the whole recipe in a minute. But first, the one thing that actually separates a great empanada from a sad one, and it isn't an ingredient. You... Read more...
The Fire Is the Recipe
The Fire Is the Recipe
People ask me for recipes all the time, and I never know what to tell them. There's no recipe. There's a piece of beef and there's coarse salt. That's the... Read more...
The Rules Nobody Tells You About “Mate”
The Rules Nobody Tells You About “Mate”
There's a moment I've watched play out a hundred times. Somebody hands an American a mate. He takes it, sips it politely, says "thank you," and hands it back. Everyone... Read more...
Your butcher doesn’t speak Argentine
Your butcher doesn’t speak Argentine
The first time I walked into a Miami butcher shop and asked for vacío, the guy looked at me with real sympathy. The way you look at someone who's lost.... Read more...
The Malbec problem
The Malbec problem
A guy at one of our dinners told me he doesn't like Argentine wine. I asked what he'd tried. He said Malbec. I asked which one. He looked at me... Read more...
Nobody Rushes the Fire
Nobody Rushes the Fire
I spent most of my life trying to get somewhere faster than everyone else. Race cars. That was my world. You live in tenths of a second, you brake later... Read more...