Hispanic Heritage · Venezuela

Los Llanos

San Fernando de Apure · Elorza · Achaguas · Mantecal · Guasdualito · Barinas

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Carne en vara, en la parrilla de casa

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The Venezuelan plains offer a fire-centered kitchen. This home adaptation of carne en vara explores beef, slow roasting, and a fresh green sauce, translating an open-fire tradition for an everyday grill.

La Gente

Manage the heat rather than rushing the meat. Prepare the guasacaca separately so its herbs and acidity remain bright. Slice and serve the beef after resting, with the sauce available for each person to add.

Sabor

The plains cook with smoke, salt, beef fat, and green. Whatever seasoning there is lives in the guasacaca: avocado, cilantro, parsley, garlic, vinegar, a little chile. Nothing sweet. Nothing complicated. The meat is meant to taste like the animal and the wood.

Spice DNA · Smoke high · Herb medium · Acid medium · Heat low · Sweet none

Seasonings to explore

• Minced Garlic in Olive Oil. In the guasacaca, and on the meat if you are from a family that breaks the rule. Adds a savory garlic base.
• Black Pepper, ground. On the meat, for the rule-breakers, and in the sauce.
• Cilantro flakes. For the guasacaca when there is no fresh.
• Parsley flakes. Same.
• Onion Powder. In the sauce, alongside the fresh onion.
• Crushed Red Pepper. A pinch in the guasacaca. The plain likes it mild, but not that mild.

From your market: a bone-in beef short rib plate, a beef shoulder or chuck roast, kosher salt, hardwood charcoal or better a hardwood fire, ripe avocados, cilantro, parsley, a green pepper, a white onion, limes, white vinegar, yuca, and casabe if a Venezuelan market is near you. Badia does not sell the fire. Build a real one.

Cocina

Carne en vara, en la parrilla de casa

Beef, salt, and hardwood embers for three to four hours. A home grill with a lid, indirect heat, and patience gets you most of the way there. A wooden stake gets you the rest.

Serves 8

The meat

• 4 lb bone-in beef short rib plate, whole
• 3 lb beef chuck or shoulder, whole
• ¼ cup kosher salt
• Optional, for the families who do it: 2 tbsp Badia Minced Garlic in Olive Oil and 1 tsp Badia Black Pepper, rubbed on the night before

Guasacaca

• 2 ripe avocados
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• ½ white onion, chopped
• 1 tbsp Badia Minced Garlic in Olive Oil, or 3 garlic cloves
• ½ cup cilantro, or 2 tbsp Badia Cilantro flakes
• ¼ cup parsley, or 1 tbsp Badia Parsley flakes
• ¼ cup white vinegar
• Juice of 1 lime
• ¼ cup oil
• ½ tsp Badia Onion Powder
• ½ tsp Badia Black Pepper, ground
• Pinch of Badia Crushed Red Pepper
• Salt

1. Salt the meat. An hour before, rub the salt into every surface. If using garlic and pepper, add them the night before.
2. The fire. Light a full chimney of hardwood charcoal, or better, burn hardwood logs down to embers. Bank all of it to one side of the grill. The meat goes on the other side, never over the coals. Close the lid with the vents cracked. You want 250 to 300°F and you want it steady.
3. Three to four hours. Turn the meat every 45 minutes. Add a few coals each time to hold the heat. Do not baste. Do not open the lid otherwise. The ribs are done when the meat has pulled back from the bone and a fork twists in easily; the shoulder when it gives under your thumb.
4. The guasacaca, meanwhile. Blend everything to a rough green sauce, chunkier than a guacamole, thinner than a paste. Taste for salt and acid. It should be sharp. It keeps a day in the fridge with the pit in it, which everyone says and nobody has proven.
5. Rest and cut. Rest the meat 20 minutes. Cut the ribs between the bones and the shoulder into thick slices against the grain. Serve on a board, not a plate, with the guasacaca, boiled yuca, arepas, and casabe. Eat with your hands. A llanero would.

Pueblos de los Llanos

San Fernando de Apure · Elorza · Achaguas · Mantecal · Guasdualito · Barinas · Santa Bárbara de Barinas · Socopó · Guanare · Acarigua · Araure · Turén · San Carlos · Tinaquillo · Calabozo · San Juan de los Morros · Valle de la Pascua · Zaraza · El Sombrero · Altagracia de Orituco

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