You can build a parrilla with a metal grate and four bricks.
I have seen construction workers do it inside unfinished buildings, and road crews set one up wherever they could find a little space. Somebody lights the fire, a few strips of beef rib go onto the grill, and lunch is underway.
In Argentina, there is usually someone in every group who becomes responsible for the asado. It may not be formally decided. He is simply the person who knows how to manage the fire, or perhaps the one who complains least when everybody else disappears to drink wine.
Whatever kind of parrilla they build, tira de asado will probably be on it.
My father always cooked it. For me, an asado without tira de asado feels incomplete. Vacío, entraña and chorizo all have their place, but this is the cut that gives the meal its name.
Beef rib, but cut the Argentine way
Tira de asado is beef rib cut across the bones.
That sounds simple, but the way it is cut changes how it cooks and how it is eaten. We do not normally leave the ribs as one enormous piece. The butcher cuts through the rib section crossways, producing a long strip containing several small sections of bone.
After cooking, that strip is divided again between the bones. Each person receives a small piece of meat with its own bone, which becomes a natural handle. You can eat it with a knife and fork, but picking it up with your hand and cleaning the meat from around the bone is perfectly acceptable.
It may not be elegant. It is much more satisfying.
In Argentina, I would ask the butcher to prepare the ribs at the thickness I wanted. In London, it is more complicated. British short ribs are often cut into large individual pieces, or divided in a way that is useful for braising but not for an Argentine parrilla.
I usually buy a complete rib section and break it down myself. Cutting across beef bones with a manual saw is easily the least romantic part of making an asado. Even supermarket short ribs, when I can find them, are normally much larger than the pieces we would use in Argentina.
We like the bones short and the strip manageable. It should still have enough meat and fat to survive a slow cook, but it should not look like something taken directly from The Flintstones.
Why the fat matters
Tira de asado should have some fat.
Not an absurd amount, but enough to protect the meat during cooking and give flavour to a cut that spends a long time over the embers. A completely lean strip may look attractive in the butcher’s display, but it will often become dry on the parrilla.
This is not a steak that needs to be marinated or covered with spices. I salt the meat side and let the cut, the bone, the fat and the fire do the work.
The heat should be gentle and indirect. The objective is not to attack the outside with flames while leaving the meat tight and raw around the bones.
As with most traditional asado cuts, patience is more useful than aggression.
Bone side down
I cook tira de asado for most of the time with the bone facing the embers.
The bones act as a shield, allowing the meat to cook slowly without being exposed directly to the strongest heat. Depending on the thickness, it can remain like that for a long time. I am not watching a stopwatch. I look at how the meat is changing, how the fat is rendering and how much heat is reaching it.
If the strip is particularly thick, I also stand it on its edges for a while. This helps cook and colour the fatty sides without placing the meat directly over fierce embers.
Only towards the end do I turn it onto the meat side.
That final part is shorter. The meat has already cooked slowly through the bone; now it needs colour and a little crust. If you begin with the meat side down over strong heat, you may get a beautiful surface very quickly, but that does not mean the rib is ready.
Tira de asado is a good example of something my father taught me without ever turning it into a formal lesson: the side closest to the fire is not always the side you are trying to cook.
Sometimes it is the side protecting everything else.
Banderita: the fast version
There is also a thinner version called asado banderita.
It is the same rib section cut into narrow strips. Because the cut is thin, it does not need the long, gentle cooking of a traditional tira. It can be cooked quickly, turning it from one side to the other over stronger heat.
Banderita is useful when there is little time, when you are cooking for only a few people or when a large parrilla is not available. It can even be cooked on a plancha.
It is not inferior to a thick tira. It is simply a different way of eating the same cut. The edges become crisp, the fat colours quickly and every little piece still has that combination of meat and bone.
But you need to pay attention. A thick tira forgives you if you leave it over low embers while talking. A banderita does not. A couple of extra minutes can turn it from juicy to dry.
The calesita on the kitchen stove
Not every Argentine asado was made in a garden over wood or charcoal.
At home we had a calesita, a small circular grill that sat directly over a gas burner. It had an opening in the middle and a tray underneath where you added water. The design allowed the heat to rise while the tray collected the fat and reduced the smoke.
It did not reproduce the flavour of a wood or charcoal parrilla. There is no point pretending that gas and a tray of water create the same result as embers.
But it worked.
You could cook banderita, sausages or smaller pieces of meat in an ordinary kitchen. For people living in flats, without a garden or balcony, it offered a small domestic version of the parrilla.
That is part of what I like about tira de asado. It belongs on the large family parrilla, cooking slowly beside vacío and entraña, but it can also be cut thin and cooked on a little calesita above the kitchen stove.
It does not depend on expensive equipment.
From four bricks to a London parrilla
There is something very Argentine about stopping work and making an asado with whatever is available.
A proper adjustable parrilla is better. Of course it is. It gives the asador control over the height, the embers and the different cooking areas. But the culture of asado was never dependent on perfect equipment.
A metal grate supported by bricks is enough. A small fire, a strip of ribs and someone prepared to take responsibility for cooking them.
Today, in London, I may work with several grills, carefully control different temperatures and cut a complete rib section myself to recover the Argentine cuts I want. The equipment has become more elaborate and the butchery more difficult.
But tira de asado still makes sense to me in its most basic form.
Meat. Bone. Salt. A patient fire.
And when it is ready, a small rib that you can pick up with your fingers and eat directly from the bone.
That may be the distance between simply grilling beef ribs and making an asado.