Argentine Chimichurri, Choripan and Lazy Summer Cooking

Because at some point, we all get sick of cooking

For the first few months of pandemic living, I reveled in taking on ambitious culinary projects I’d never found time for before. Bun bo Hue from scratch. Homemade injera. The venison heart that had been living in the freezer since my dad’s last hunting trip. But almost half a year into cooking almost every meal, every single day, I’ve got to admit I’m reaching for low-hanging fruit. Enter Argentine chimichurri sauce.

Like my beloved tonnato sauce, chimichurri packs a wallop of flavor into minimal prep time – with pandemic-friendly ingredients you’ve probably got on hand already. Parsley, garlic, dried oregano, red pepper flakes, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, the end. The hardest part of the recipe is plucking the parsley leaves off the stems, and truth be told, you don’t even have to worry about the stems as long as you chop everything up really finely.

It’s low-fuss cooking at its finest.

Chimichurri sauce is one of Argentina’s culinary gifts to the world, and the most common accompaniment for the grilled meats that (seem to) make up 90% of the Argentine diet. It’s dynamite with grilled steaks, chops, kabobs, chicken, fish – really anything that touches the grill should also touch this sauce. Chimichurri is, as you might expect, part of the holy trinity that is choripan: toasted baguette (the pan) stuffed with grilled Argentine chorizo sausage, slathered in chimichurri sauce. (If you aren’t already drooling, check out episode 1 of Street Food: Latin America on Netflix.) Choripan is arguably the best street food dish in Argentina.

But in my opinion, chimichurri sauce also has a wealth of applications beyond grilled meats. Try spooning it over hot eggplant slices or portobello mushrooms right off the grill, so they can soak in all that garlicky, oily goodness. (If you also dust the veggies lightly with smoky Spanish pimentón and stuff them into a toasted baguette, you’ve got a vegan choripan worthy of the name.) Drizzle chimichurri on a grilled cheese or deli sandwich. Or, use it as a salad dressing for sturdy mixed greens, roasted or grilled veggies, or – the vegetable on everyone’s mind in late summer – peak season tomatoes.

Chimichurri can help you eat all of this.

Choripan with tomatoes is one of my favorite ultra-simple summer feasts. While some Argentines might consider it sacrilege, I think a little sliced tomato adds great texture and refreshing moisture to choripan, and a pile of tomato wedges drizzled with chimichurri helpfully provides both roughage and a palate-cleansing break from all that sausage. It makes a quick and easy dinner that’s spicy, chewy, juicy, rich, garlicky and herbaceous all at once – and if you’ve got a grill, you don’t even need a kitchen to make it.

Pro tip: Link sausages for choripan are usually grilled whole until the outsides are nicely charred, then slit open lengthwise and butterflied to grill the inside, too. I find this unnecessarily messy. My preference is to slit the casing off the raw sausage, and flatten it out into a mostly-rectangular patty with an even thickness before cooking. You get more caramelized surface area that way, and the sausage fits much better in its baguette cradle than the split version. Cook in a hot pan on the stove (my usual), or out on the grill. Just look out for flare-ups.

Another pro tip: As with any baguette sandwich, hold the bread upside down when you’re taking a bite so you don’t cut the roof of your mouth.

Chimichurri Sauce

Makes about 1 cup

2 cups lightly packed flat-leaf parsley

5 Tbsp white balsamic vinegar, or other mild white wine vinegar

¾ tsp coarse kosher sea salt

½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

½ tsp crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 small bay leaf, crumbled up finely (optional)

1 Tbsp minced garlic (3-4 cloves)

6 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Prep the parsley

Wash the parsley (no need to dry it) and pluck the leaves off the thick stems. It’s fine to leave the thin stems attached. Measure out 2 cups lightly packed, then chop it finely by hand or with a food processor.

Mix the other aromatics

In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the vinegar, salt, pepper, red pepper, and bay leaf (if using) until the salt dissolves. Finely mince the garlic and add to the vinegar mixture. Now add your chopped parsley, and whisk in the olive oil in a slow stream. Taste for seasoning, and add more red pepper flakes if you like.

Let stand at room temperature at least 20 minutes before using, and store unused sauce in the refrigerator. It’s best (and brightest) the day it’s made, but will stay delicious for a couple of days longer.

Argentine Choripan with Tomatoes

Serves 2

If you can’t find Argentine-style chorizo sausage, don’t buy Mexican chorizo or Spanish chorizo – the textures and flavor are very different. Just use a spicy Italian sausage instead, and be extra generous with the chimichurri. Substitute thick-cut slices of eggplant or halved portobello mushrooms for a vegan version.

2 fresh Argentine chorizo links, or other fresh, spicy pork sausage

2 six-inch sections of baguette

1 medium tomato of any kind, sliced

1 lb colorful heirloom tomatoes, cut into wedges

⅓ cup chimichurri sauce (recipe above)

Prep the Pan

Preheat a grill to medium. Cut each of the baguette sections lengthwise like a submarine sandwich, but leave the crust attached on one side so the bread opens like a laptop computer. Hollow out excess bread from the inside and save for another recipe. Lightly toast the bread on the grill and set aside.

Cook the Chori

Slit the casings off the sausages and discard. Flatten the links into long patties with an even thickness. Grill or pan-fry the sausages at medium heat until nicely caramelized on both sides and cooked through (160 degrees Fahrenheit in the center).

While the meat’s grilling, slice your tomato for the sandwiches, and cut the other tomatoes into wedges for your side salad.

Build the Beast

To finish your choripan, slather some chimichurri sauce all over the inside of the baguette shells, layer the sliced tomatoes on the bottom, and top with the cooked sausage and another lick of sauce for good measure.

Serve with the tomato wedges on the side, drizzled with more chimichurri. Garlic is good for you!