The Chimichurri Sauce, The Argentine Hot Sauce

Silly me. After staying in Argentina for more than 25 days, only I realized that Argentina has their own hot chili sauce, the chimichurri sauce. As a Malaysian, our country is blessed with heavily spiced food and sauces.

Though I couldn’t take hot food as much as my wife, Rachel. My taste bud and my crave for hot sauce, is always there.

While having lunch in La Boca at the last few days of my Argentine visit, I was introduced to this hot sauce by a fellow Malaysian who resides there, Shakhira. The word itself sounds cute, chimichurri.

Though is not as hot as our Malaysian sauce but the oily hot Argentine sauce put a presence in me with its distinctive heavily spiced flavor. My curiosity about this sauce made me to search for more information about this sauce.

It was said a British by the name of “Jimmy McCurry” who was the first to prepare the sauce. As the it was hard to pronounce the “Jimmy McCurry”, it was later on called chimichurri. Read more about it here – source Wikipedia.org

While its famous for its green color, the chimichurri sauce I had was the red color version.

Chimichurri is made from finely chopped parsley, minced garlic, vegetable oil or olive oil, white or red vinegar, and red pepper flakes. Additional flavorings such as paprika (pimenton dulce), oregano, cumin, thyme, cilantro (coriander leaf), lemon, and bay leaf (laurel), and in the red version, tomato and red bell pepper may also be added. – Wikipedia.org

I wished I knew more about the chimicurri sauce earlier during my Argentine visit. Probably I could have tried the green color version. Or probably I did had one as it might be used in the meat marination. Well, no matter how, I couldn’t be disappointed that much as I found a few recipes about chimicurri HERE.

Remember to order the chimichurri sauce just in case you crave for one. Thanks for reading.

Wilson Ng