We have been welcoming guests to Los Potreros (The Enclosures) since the 1940s and our kitchen provides everyone who stays here with an insight into the delights of Argentine cuisine. Visitors discover the art of making and savouring traditional mate tea, the secrets to getting the best flavours from Argentina’s famous beef, and the family recipes behind the sumptuous cakes that are baking continuously in the original wood-burning oven. The kitchen is, without a doubt, the heart and soul of the estancia.The pleasures of Argentine food are also extended to the outdoors, with guests enjoying their meals under the shade of the verandah or a nearby tree. Their friendly chatter over the dining table is accompanied by the lively chirping of monk parakeets in the branches above.
Every chef across the world, pays close attention to what goes into their food but here at Los Potreros we are also concerned about what our food is doing to the environment. Our chefs have always had a “no waste mentality” and now more than every they are minimizing what they throw out and developing a menu to ensure they can continue to cut down what little waste we still have, throughout the last few months we have begun to test out new ideas with great success.
One of our favourite and most celebrated meals on the estancia is Osobuco. There is nothing nicer than walking in for dinner to be greeted by the aroma of red wine and rosemary. The chefs prepare the osobuco at lunchtime and the meat braises for at least 5 hours throughout the afternoon, ensuring the meat is soft and full of flavour when they go to take it for dinner the beef falls spectacularly off the bone.
The asado originated in the 19th century with the gauchos, the word is used to describe both the occasion and the meat itself, traditionally wood from the White Quebracho tree would be used as it is relatively smokeless and produces good coals. Whilst beef is the focus of the asado many argentines also choose to cook chicken. Lunches at Los Potreros include both options but we particularly love a chicken asado. Chicken cooked on the parrilla marinated with lemon, onion, garlic, fresh herbs and olive oil. The preferred method is cooking the chicken as a whole butterflied.
1 Chicken
3 Onions
4 Garlic Cloves
Lemon Juice
Fresh thyme & rosemary
Olive oil
To prepare the parrilla for cooking you will need a lot of coals and a higher temperature than cooking beef, so ensure you light the fire around 30 minutes earlier than if you were cooking a normal asado. Light the fire around 11am to have sufficient time to begin cooking for a 1330 lunch. You will need minimum of one and a half hours to cook the chicken and must always put chicken on the parrilla for half an hour more than any red meat. Using a butterflied chicken place on the parrilla bone face-down and allow the chicken to start cooking. To check if the grill is hot enough hold your hand above it and if you can hold it for longer than 10 seconds you need to add more coals. Peel the onions and garlic and blend with the lemon juice and olive oil until it produces a thick paste and roughly cut the fresh herbs and add them to the mix. Brush the chicken with the paste whilst cooking, 3 or 4 times until serving, to ensure the chicken stays moist and does not become too dry. Turn the chickens regularly so they don’t burn and to allow for even cooking.
* goes really well with a fresh salad and bread cooked on the parrilla. Top the bread with fresh tomatoes diced with oregano, diced onions and a little olive oil.
Food prepared “al disco” does not refer to a particular recipe but rather a cooking style.
Traditionally farm workers would use the blade of their plough; flipped on its side, wiped clean and with a fire lit below - these days we use a huge iron plow disc heated over a wood fire, but you can recreate this in a heavy bottom pan. Discos provide a large surface area for cooking while remaining easily portable, they are particularly useful for preparing meals away from the kitchen.
The following recipe for pollo al disco is using white wine, but this can be substituted with beer.
Serves 4
3 x chicken breasts - either cooked whole or cut into chunks
2 onions
2 red peppers sliced
2 green peppers
A handful of fresh herbs chopped
2 diced garlic cloves
Cream
Chilli flakes
Paprika
2 bay leaf
White wine
Water
Olive oil
To prepare the chicken use breast meat or cut into chunks on the bone (if leaving pieces on the bone it will take longer to cook). Once the disco is placed over the flames begin cooking immediately or it will burn and smoke. Add a splash of oil and sauté the chicken, stirring often until the chicken has colour all over. Once the chicken has begun cooking add the onions and garlic, allow to soften. Then add white wine, peppers, spices and herbs - flavor according to taste. Continue to add wine and water throughout cooking to ensure the meat doesn’t dry out. Stir often. Do not taste the sauce until the chicken is cooked.
Once the chicken has been cooked, and you are ready to serve drizzle some cream over the chicken, as you plate it.
There are meals, and then there is the asado. In Argentina it is never just lunch - it is a ritual, a slow and unhurried gathering built around fire, good meat and even better company. At Estancia Los Potreros, the asado sits at the very heart of daily life, just as it has for generations of gauchos before us.
The asado traces back to the gauchos who worked the pampas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With cattle in abundance and little else on hand, they cooked freshly butchered beef over open flames using nothing more than wood, embers and simple iron crosses called asadores. There was no need to dress it up - the quality of the meat did all the talking.
As Argentina's cattle industry grew, so did the asado's place in national life. What began as a practical way for gauchos to eat became a cornerstone of Argentine culture, from Sunday family lunches to birthdays, holidays and celebrations of every kind. The parrilla replaced the open pit, but the philosophy never changed: cook slowly, over embers rather than flame, and let the fire do the work.
The asado begins long before the first cut of meat touches the grill. The asador - the person in charge of the fire - takes on an almost ceremonial role, building a bed of glowing embers that will cook slowly and evenly over hours rather than minutes. This is the real difference between an asado and a barbecue: here, the fire is a craft.
A few of the secrets our chefs swear by:
Use dry hardwood, which makes better coals. For a 2pm lunch, light the fire around 11am, or earlier for a big group.
Keep feeding the fire and rake the glowing coals under the parrilla as they form.
Test the heat with your hand. If you can hold it above the grill for more than ten seconds, it needs more coals. You should hear the meat sizzle as soon as it goes on.
Season with coarse salt and nothing else. Argentines don't marinate their beef - the flavour comes from good meat and good grilling.
Be patient. Most Argentines like their meat medium well or well done, and that takes time.
A proper asado arrives in stages, never all at once. Sausages come first - chorizo and morcilla (blood sausage) - followed by the cuts: tira de asado (short ribs), vacío (flank), bife de chorizo (sirloin), matambre and, for the adventurous, mollejas (sweetbreads) and other achuras. There may be chicken or pork too, and at Los Potreros a suckling pig goes on the parrilla for special occasions such as Christmas and New Year's Eve.
It's all about the meat, but there are always a few treats alongside. Provoleta, a grilled, gooey slab of cheese seasoned with herbs from our garden, makes the perfect start. Roasted potatoes, sweetcorn and peppers, fresh salads and crusty bread follow, with a bowl of chimichurri on the side that never gets in the way of the beef.
Here in the Sierras Chicas, the asado tradition is very much alive. Much of the beef we serve comes from cattle raised on the estancia under a rotational grazing plan, so what lands on your plate reflects the land it came from. Our chefs cook on an open-air parrilla under the big Córdoba sky, and guests are welcome to gather round, watch the fire being built and ask as many questions as they like.
It might follow a long morning ride through the hills or a lazy Sunday on the estancia. Either way, the scene is the same: the smell of wood smoke drifting across the yard, horses grazing nearby, glasses of red wine being refilled and conversation stretching long into the afternoon. Guests often tell us their most memorable meals were the simplest ones, shared at a long table as the mountains turned gold in the late afternoon light.
Perhaps that is why the asado feels less like a meal and more like a way of understanding Argentina itself. It teaches patience, generosity and the importance of gathering together. No unnecessary ceremony, no complicated presentation - just excellent ingredients, good company and time.
Some of life's greatest luxuries are also the simplest: fire, food, friendship and an open sky.
