Entraña: The Argentine Cut That Gets Lost in Translation

In Argentina, if you ask for entraña, everybody knows what you mean.

In London, I can ask for skirt steak and receive onglet, inside skirt or something else entirely. After years of trying to explain it, I often find it easier to buy a much larger section of beef and remove the entraña myself.

That tells you something about this cut. Its name does not translate neatly. You need to know where it sits on the animal.

And once you find the real one, you need to know how to cook it.

Why Argentinians love entraña

Entraña is one of the cuts I most associate with the Argentine parrilla.

It is thin, deeply flavoured and quick to cook. It does not need several hours over gentle embers like a large vacío or thick tira de asado. It usually arrives later on the parrilla and can be ready while the larger cuts continue cooking.

This makes it useful at home, but also in restaurants. You do not need a complete Argentine parrilla to cook a good entraña. A heavy plancha or cast-iron surface works very well.

For me, its appeal is not tenderness alone. Fillet is more tender, but it does not have the same character. Entraña has a strong beef flavour and a very visible grain. Cooked properly, it remains juicy and has enough resistance to remind you that you are eating meat.

Cooked badly, it becomes dry and difficult to chew remarkably quickly.

That small distance between the two results is what makes it interesting.

What is the real entraña?

The entraña I am discussing here is the outside skirt: the thin part of the diaphragm attached along the inside of the ribs.

In Argentina, entraña does not mean any flat steak with long fibres. We expect a particular piece: long and relatively narrow, with a loose, coarse grain and a membrane covering it. That combination of shape, texture and location is part of what defines the cut.

This is where the confusion begins.

Outside skirt, inside skirt, bavette and hanger steak are not four names for the same thing. They are different muscles. Unfortunately, the word skirt is used for more than one of them in Britain.

Even the official British vocabulary contains the beginning of the problem. UK carcase-classification guidance calls the diaphragm the thin skirt or rib skirt. That is the piece closest to what an Argentine butcher calls entraña. But it calls the pillar of the diaphragm the thick skirt. That second piece is commonly sold as hanger steak or onglet.

Both belong to the diaphragm, but they are not the same cut.

Then there is the inside skirt, which, despite its name, is not the inner face of the outside skirt. It is a different abdominal muscle. AHDB classifies it within the thin flank, alongside other pieces with names such as flank skirt, bavette and goose skirt. Once all those names reach a butcher's counter or a restaurant menu, skirt steak can become a loose description for several flat, coarse-grained cuts.

Here is the simplest way I can separate them:

This is why translating entraña as skirt steak is not enough. In Argentina, the Spanish name points us towards one familiar cut. In Britain, the English word can point towards a family of neighbouring cuts.

Onglet is a very good example. I cook it and enjoy it. It has a deep flavour and deserves its own place on the grill. But if I ask for entraña, it is not the piece I expect to receive.

If you are speaking to a British butcher, I would ask for it like this:

I’m looking for a whole outside skirt steak—the thin diaphragm muscle attached along the ribs. Not inside skirt, and not hanger steak or onglet. It’s the cut Argentinians call entraña.

A butcher who understands the anatomy should know what you mean. A butcher working only from the word skirt may quite reasonably think you mean something else.

If you want to see why this is so confusing, look at the AHDB Meat Purchasing Guide, one of the main British trade references for meat cuts. It contains specifications for more than 700 cuts, yet the Argentine entraña does not fit neatly into any of the names shown there. AHDB lists skirt steaks from the diaphragm and, separately, an inside skirt taken from the transversus abdominis. But it does not clearly identify the particular piece I know as entraña: the thin diaphragm muscle attached to the inside of the ribs.

That is not just a problem of translation. It is a problem of different butchery traditions dividing and naming the animal differently.

Finding entraña in Britain

When I buy beef at the wholesale market in London, the piece sold to me as flank is not the neat, individual flank steak that many people imagine.

It is a large, relatively untrimmed section, sometimes still containing the lower rib bones and several layers of muscle. Then I break it down myself.

An Argentine butcher would not necessarily sell all of that as one cut. Looking at the same section, we begin to recognise and separate the falda, parts of the vacío, the outer sheet we use as matambre, the inside skirt or what may be called falsa entraña, the meat around the lower ribs and—if the processor has left it attached—the true entraña running along the inner face of the ribs.

That does not mean the word flank always describes this entire collection in Britain. A retail butcher may use flank for one trimmed steak. My wholesale supplier uses it for a much larger section. The name changes with the stage of butchery and with the person selling it.

It is not the most economical way to buy five entrañas. To obtain five of them, I may need to buy five large rib sections. But it gives me control over exactly which muscle I am serving.

This is one of the biggest lessons I have learnt from cooking Argentine food in Britain: translating the name of a cut is often not enough.

Argentina and Britain do not simply use different words. We divide, group and sell this part of the animal differently. The same muscle may be trimmed in another way, left attached to a larger section or removed at the abattoir before the butcher ever sees the rest of the flank.

In fact, under the standard UK carcase dressing specification, the thin skirt may remain on the carcase, while under the UK specification it is removed during dressing. That helps explain why the real entraña may disappear very early in the supply chain rather than arriving at the shop attached to the ribs.

Sometimes you have to stop asking, “What is the English word?” and start asking, “Where is this muscle on the animal?”

Should you remove the membrane?

This is one of those questions Argentinians can argue about for longer than it takes to cook the meat.

Both methods are valid.

Many people leave the membrane on one side. They place the entraña over strong heat with the membrane facing down, season the exposed side and then turn it to finish the other side. The membrane gives the meat some protection and can help when you want to cook it further without drying it as quickly.

This can be useful when cooking for children or for anyone who prefers beef more thoroughly cooked. But it is not merely a children’s technique. Plenty of experienced asadores cook entraña this way because they like the result.

My preference is different.

I nearly always remove the membrane from both sides, whether I am using the parrilla or the plancha. I prefer direct contact between the meat and the heat, and I like the texture without the membrane.

The important practical detail is temperature.

It is easier to remove the membrane while the entraña is still cold. When cold, the membrane is firmer and easier to lift without tearing the meat underneath.

I start with my fingers and pull gently. A knife should only help separate the places where the membrane refuses to release. If you attack it with the blade, you can easily remove good meat along with it.

Only after cleaning the entraña do I leave it out of the refrigerator.

How I prepare entraña

Once the membranes are removed, I give the meat at least thirty minutes to lose the refrigerator chill before cooking.

When I am preparing an asado, I sometimes hang it near the parrilla for a short time while I work. Not over the heat and not long enough to begin cooking—just close enough to bring it towards the temperature of the environment.

I season it on both sides before it goes onto the parrilla.

For entraña, I use sal entrefina or sal parrillera: a medium-coarse salt. It is finer than the very coarse crystals used in some salt grinders, but coarser than ordinary table salt.

The grains remain present on the surface without forming an aggressive crust.

The meat does not need a marinade. It does not need tenderiser, a complicated spice rub or ten ingredients mixed in a bowl.

Good beef, salt and heat are enough.

Strong heat does not mean burning the meat

Entraña needs strong heat and a short cooking time.

I cook it vuelta y vuelta: one side, then the other, without constantly moving it around. This applies whether I am using a parrilla or a heavy plancha.

But strong heat is not the same as flames touching the meat or iron hot enough to turn the outside black before the centre has warmed.

The objective is a properly browned surface and a juicy interior.

On a parrilla, that means strong, stable embers rather than uncontrolled flames. On a plancha, it means starting with a hot surface but reducing the heat if the iron begins to burn the meat instead of browning it.

I do not like giving an exact cooking time because entrañas vary enormously in thickness. One may be almost twice as thick as another. The heat of two parrillas can also be completely different.

You have to look at the meat.

The surface should develop colour, the edges should begin to contract, and the entraña should still feel flexible when you remove it. My preference is usually juicy, although the final point depends on the person who will eat it.

Once it leaves the heat, I always let it rest for a few minutes.

It is a small cut, so it does not need the long rest of a large roast. But cutting it immediately throws away some of the juice you worked to preserve.

The final cut matters

You can cook entraña beautifully and still ruin its texture with the knife.

The muscle fibres are long and extremely visible. If you cut in the same direction as those fibres, each bite contains long strands that your teeth have to break.

Cutting across the grain shortens them.

Before cooking, look at the direction in which the fibres run. After resting, place the entraña on the board and slice across those lines, not alongside them. I like to cut it at a slight angle rather than making completely vertical slices.

This is not presentation for the sake of presentation. It changes how tender the meat feels when you eat it.

The cut has not changed. Your experience of it has.

Two valid ways to cook it

My usual method is clear: remove both membranes while the meat is cold, let it lose the refrigerator chill, salt one side and cook it quickly over strong but controlled heat.

But I would not tell someone that leaving one membrane is wrong.

Start with the membrane facing the heat. Let it protect that side while the entraña cooks, season the exposed surface and then turn it to finish directly over the heat. This gives you a little more room to take the meat towards medium or well done.

The important thing is to understand what the membrane is doing and choose deliberately.

That is how I think about Argentine cooking in general. Tradition is valuable, but repeating a rule without knowing why does not make you a better cook.

And if somebody insists there is only one correct way to prepare entraña, invite another Argentine into the conversation.

You will soon have at least two.