COOK: Chimichurri Sauce (Argentinian Parsley and Garlic Pesto)

• Serving Ideas for Chimichurri Sauce
• Chimichurri Sauce Ingredients
• Kitchen Equipment Needed
• How to Make Authentic Chimichurri
• Storage & Serving Ideas
• Chimichurri Sauce (Argentinian Parsley and Garlic Pesto)

Chimichurri sauce is a zesty Latin American pesto, made with chopped parsley and often cilantro. It’s especially popular in Argentina and Uruguay, where it’s served with grilled meats, especially skirt steak & fried yuca chips, and used as a marinade to add flavor before grilling or broiling.

It’s incredibly simple to make, fresh, and so delicious. You can make this sauce by hand, either with a sharp knife & cutting board or mortar and pestle, or whip it up in a few minutes with a food processor.

You can also use a blender, though that is more likely to give you a smooth pesto instead of a chunky sauce with a nice texture from the chopped herbs. This can be great for a marinade though, where you want the flavor to get into all the hard-to-reach places.

Serving Ideas for Chimichurri Sauce

You don’t have to just serve this on steak! You can use this fresh, green sauce for lots of recipes:

• Try it with pan-seared or grilled fatty fish like salmon, or with pork chops, roasts, and poultry.
• It’s a great marinade for grilled vegetable skewers, or grilled or broiled portabello mushrooms.
• I love this on a savory baked sweet potato, or a loaded regular baked potato.
• Toss it with freshly cooked pasta for a hot or cold side dish, or add sliced grilled meats, shrimp, diced rotisserie chicken, or meatballs to make it an entree.
• Serve with vegetable crudites for a vegan dip, or use as a garlicky salad dressing.
• Mix with mayo and plain yogurt or sour cream for a homemade chip or veggie dip with zip!

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Chimichurri Sauce Ingredients

Herbs:

This bright green sauce can be made with all parsley, or a blend of parsley and cilantro. Either style usually has fresh or dried oregano added.

I like to make mine with approximately equal parts fresh parsley and cilantro. If you’re one of those unfortunate super-tasters who can’t stand cilantro, you can use additional parsley to replace the cilantro and still have an authentic chimichurri.

Some would argue that the all-parsley chimichurri sauce is the “correct” one, but there are different styles depending on which region of Latin America you are in or from.

Olive oil:

Use a good quality flavorful, bright green olive oil if you want a grassy, olive-oil forward sauce, or a more neutral lighter olive oil or sunflower oil if you want the herbs and spices to be the main focus.

Garlic:

Use fresh garlic cloves here, not powder or the pre-chopped paste. You want the sharp bite that fresh garlic gives you for the most pungent sauce.

Seasonings:

Lemon zest (optional), ground cumin, fresh or dried oregano, freshly ground black pepper, a pinch of cayenne pepper, and kosher salt.

I like to use either malt vinegar, sherry vinegar, or wine vinegar in my chimichurri, but you can also use apple cider vinegar for a softer flavor, or some sharp citrus (lime or lemon) if you want a brighter flavor profile.

Kitchen Equipment Needed

Much like with Italian pesto or Spanish pistou, you will find heated debates about the proper preparation method for this sauce as well as which herbs and other ingredients should be included.

Which method you choose will determine the final texture you want your sauce to have. Do you want a smooth pesto for marinating meat or blending into a smooth spread for dipping, or do you want a more chunky, textural sauce to drizzle over your grilled meats or toss with pasta or other ingredients?

cutting board & knife:

Whichever method you use to mix or blend the sauce, you’ll want to at least trim the tough herb stalks and roughly chop the fresh herbs before blending, and peel and slice or crush the garlic.

I like to do this with a knife on a cutting board first before blending the ingredients for a more uniform sauce, but you can also just toss everything into the blender or food processor and make a smooth puree.

blender, food processor, or molejete:

If you want to be a staunch traditionalist, use a molejete or large mortar and pestle to pulverize the herbs and garlic together. You can also just finely mince all of the ingredients and leave the sauce chunky.

Or, pulse everything together in a blender or food processor, or pack your roughly chopped ingredients into a wide-mouth quart jar and use an immersion blender to make a chunky puree.

I use a food processor, after roughly chopping the garlic, for the best combination of convenience and consistency. You have more control over the sauce texture with a food processor than a blender, but it’s also fast and easy.

How to Make Authentic Chimichurri

prep ingredients:

• Wash and pick over the parsley and cilantro, and separate the leaves from the tougher stems.
• Roughly chop the leaves if you are blending your sauce, or finely mince them if you are mixing by hand or with a molejete for a textural, chunky chimichurri.
• Peel and roughly chop the garlic cloves and measure out about one tablespoon, or more or less to taste.

blend chimichurri sauce:

• Add the garlic, dried herbs, lemon zest (if you are using it) and all of the dry seasonings to the jar of a blender or food processor, and pulse until the garlic is finely chopped.
• Add the vinegar, and pulse a few times to mix well.
• Add the parsley and cilantro leaves (or double the parsley if you aren’t using cilantro) to the processor. Pulse and scrape down the container until the herbs are finely chopped.
• Stream in the olive oil while pulsing the processor. An authentic chimichurri is not a smooth pesto, but a roughly chopped sauce with distinct bits of herbs. You can blend it smoother if you prefer, but it should still be a bit chunky for best results.

Storage & Serving Ideas

• Your sauce can be used right away, but is better if you let it rest for thirty minutes or up to a few days in the fridge to let the flavors come together.
• If you blended your sauce, the color will be brightest green if you use it immediately, and will dull slightly over time as the vinegar reacts with the chlorophyll in the herbs.
• If you want to keep this sauce longer than a week, you should portion and freeze it in smaller containers or ice cube trays. Herbs packed in oil are a botulism-risk if you don’t use them promptly or freeze them.