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When I was at University, I went to Argentina for a few weeks. I saw and ate a lot of things when I was there, but one of the favourite things I was able to bring back with me. The Asado is a special Argentinian barbeque cooked over hot embers, which it's quite easy to replicate at home, provided you have a plentiful supple of firewood, meat and salt.

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Ingredients

  1. Area of land, about 1m x 2m, that you don't mind ruining a bit. Ideally this should have some clearance around it, so you can sit round the fire.
  2. A large metal grill, or something similar, to cook the meat on - about 1m x 1m.
  3. A lot of firewood. More.
  4. Some big chunks of meat. Beef, Pork, Lamb. If you want vegetables, you will need kebab skewers.
  5. A big salt shaker.
  6. Some french sticks (baguettes).
  7. A shovel, or something.
  8. A chopping board and a big knife.

Instructions

  1. Move all your wood somewhere easily accessible to your fire pit.
  2. Split the firepit area into two. You're only going to build a fire in one half.
  3. About 3 or 4 hours before you want to eat, make a fire. No, a bigger fire. The idea here is to get a good fire burning, and to keep it burning, feeding it regularly for several hours, and gradually building it in size.
  4. An hour before it's time to eat, take your shovel and use it to move hot embers from the base of the fire to the unused side of the firepit. This step makes you look awesome in front of guests.
  5. Keep feeding the fire! And moving embers.
  6. After you've made a good base of hot glowing embers, get your metal grill, and put it over the hot embers, with about 4 inches of clearance.
  7. You should have already taken your big chunks of meat, and hewn them roughly into slighly more manageable size pieces (Sort of 5 x 4 x 2 inch chunks). Cover these very liberally in salt (like maybe 5 times as much as you would normally consider adding), and throw them onto the grill.
  8. Keep feeding the fire, and occasionally transfer more embers under the meat, or rake those that are there.
  9. Occasionally turn the meat or add more salt.
  10. Give the meat a while to cook, 40min+. When it's done, pull a piece off onto a chopping board and use the big knife to cut it into thick (inch -> half inch) slices.
  11. Guests should rip off a section of baguette and stuff them with slices of meat.
  12. After everyone has eaten, it's probably getting dark. You can remove the grill, and expand the fire to fill the whole fire pit, and sit around it into the night.

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