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If youโre designing an outdoor grill station, itโs easy to start with the grill itself.
In Argentina, we tend to think about it a little differently.
The parrilla isnโt simply a metal grate sitting over a fire. Itโs a complete cooking system built around controlling fire, embers, heat and cooking surface.
Iโve cooked on plenty of different parrillas during my years living in Argentina. Some are enormous brick structures. Others are small grills tucked into the corner of a quincho. Some have adjustable grates, others are fixed. Some burn almost exclusively wood, while others regularly use charcoal.
My own parrilla is a fixed-height Argentine grill with interchangeable cooking surfaces and a separate brasero.
And while it looks relatively simple, almost every component has a purpose.
In this guide, Iโm going to break my grill down piece by piece and explain what Iโve learned about the features that actually matter.
My fixed-height Argentine parrilla and outdoor cooking station.
A parrilla is the grill at the center of the Argentine asado tradition.
But thereโs an important distinction between the parrilla and many conventional BBQ grills.
Instead of cooking primarily by controlling burners, vents or a lid, Argentine grilling is largely about managing the embers beneath the food.
You build your fire, allow the wood or charcoal to burn down, distribute those embers beneath the cooking surface and continually adjust them throughout the cook.
Thatโs why the design of an Argentine outdoor grill station matters.
My setup has five main components:
Letโs look at each one.
My parrilla is different from one of the most recognizable Argentine grill designs.
There is no wheel or mechanism for raising and lowering the grill.
The cooking surface sits approximately 20 cm / 7.9 inches above the hearth.
Instead of changing the distance between the meat and the fire, I regulate temperature primarily by changing the quantity and position of the embers.
For example, if an area is running too hot, I donโt raise the grill. I move the embers.
It sounds simple, but learning to manage heat this way teaches you to pay far more attention to your fire.
Neither design is inherently correct. An adjustable parrilla gives you another way to control heat. This can be particularly useful if you donโt have a separate brasero.
You can raise the grill, establish your fire, wait for the embers to mature and then lower your cooking surface toward them.
I personally prefer a fixed-height grill.
Once you become familiar with the distance between the hearth and cooking surface, youโve eliminated one variable. You learn how much ember each food needs at that exact height.
For me, that makes the parrilla extremely consistent.
One of the smallest details on my parrilla is also one of the things I get asked about most.
My primary grill uses round steel bars rather than V-shaped channels.
V-shaped grates are extremely common on Argentine grills, and they certainly work.
But after cooking with both designs, I prefer round bar.
Ideally, I like the bars to be approximately 6โ10 mm thick.
There are three main reasons.
A sufficiently thick solid steel bar develops good thermal mass.
Once the metal gets hot, it retains that heat and transfers it directly to the meat.
This helps create the searing and grill marks I want when cooking steaks, vacรญo and other cuts of Argentine beef.
This is a surprisingly important consideration when designing an outdoor cooking station.
V-shaped channels are designed to catch and direct fat, but those same channels can accumulate grease and residue.
Round bars are incredibly straightforward. Heat them, brush them down and clean the surface.
Thereโs simply less space for old fat to hide.
This one isnโt exactly engineering. I just think meat looks better coming off a round-bar parrilla.
A good piece of vacรญo with clean, narrow grill marks is difficult to beat.
This is where having an interchangeable grill system becomes useful.
Not everything belongs on widely spaced steel bars.
Smaller foods can fall between them, and some ingredients benefit from having much more support underneath.
Thatโs when I swap in my mesh grill. Rather than trying to make one cooking surface work for absolutely everything, my parrilla frame allows me to change the surface depending on what Iโm cooking.
Thatโs a feature Iโd strongly consider if youโre planning your own outdoor grill station.
The steel griddle gives me another completely different cooking surface without requiring another grill.
Now Iโve essentially added a plancha to the parrilla.
The solid steel creates direct contact heat and allows you to cook ingredients that wouldnโt work particularly well over an open grate.
This is also why I like thinking of the parrilla as a cooking station rather than simply a BBQ.
One fire can power several different styles of cooking.
If there is one component that really changes how an Argentine parrilla operates, itโs the brasero.
A brasero is essentially a fire cradle.
Instead of building the main fire directly beneath your food, you burn wood or charcoal separately. As the fuel burns, mature embers fall onto the hearth below.
You then move those embers underneath whichever section of the grill needs heat.
This means my cooking fire and my ember-producing fire are effectively separate.
Thatโs extremely useful during a long asado.
If I need more heat, I donโt have to throw fresh wood underneath a steak and suddenly introduce flames and smoke. I simply make more embers.
My brasero also incorporates a small separator.
Its job is simple: help prevent sparks and flames from the active fire reaching the food on the adjacent grill.
Itโs not a dramatic feature.
But these are exactly the little details you begin appreciating after youโve cooked hundreds of fires on the same parrilla.
For those interested in the dimensions of my setup, the key measurements are:
Cooking height: 20 cm / 7.9 inches
Depth: 72 cm / 28.34 inches
Total parrilla width: 166 cm / approximately 65 inches
These dimensions work for my parrilla, but I wouldnโt suggest blindly copying measurements without thinking about how you cook.
The size of your fire area, brasero, cooking surfaces and overall outdoor space all matter.
If youโre actually planning construction, Iโve covered that separately in my guide to building your own Argentine asado grill.
BUILD IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME
This guide gives you the principles, dimensions and build sequence I use for an authentic Argentine parrilla. If youโre ready to actually build one, the Argentine Asado Build Grill Blueprint takes out the guesswork with scaled DIY building plans, exact measurements, a complete buying list and six hours of step-by-step video lessons.
That guide gets into the build itself. This article is about understanding why the different components are there in the first place.
The metalwork gets most of the attention, but the structure surrounding it is equally important.
My parrilla uses refractory bricks and appropriate heat-resistant mortar.
You need materials capable of repeatedly handling serious heat, but the thermal characteristics of the hearth are useful too.
During a long asado, the entire structure becomes hot.
Youโre not simply holding embers inside a decorative brick box. The grill gradually becomes a hot cooking environment that has been designed around fire.
This is one of the reasons I wouldnโt approach building an Argentine grill exactly like building a generic outdoor BBQ station.
The materials have to be chosen with repeated exposure to fire and heat in mind.
If youโre researching fire pits with grills or outdoor BBQ stations, the Argentine approach is worth considering.
Both let you cook over a real fire, but a parrilla gives you something especially useful:
separation between making fire and cooking with fire.
Youโre not necessarily cooking over burning logs. Youโre producing embers and then deciding exactly where those embers should go.
Want intense heat beneath your steak? Add embers.
Want a gentle area for sausages? Use fewer.
Need one side of the grill almost completely indirect? Move the embers elsewhere. The fire doesnโt control you.
You control where its heat goes.
After years of grilling, Iโve become less interested in complicated equipment.
What matters to me is consistency.
I know my grill is 20 cm above the hearth. I know how my round steel bars react to heat. I know approximately how many embers I want underneath a vacรญo. And I know when the brasero needs another piece of wood before I actually need those additional embers.
Thatโs part of what makes cooking asado so enjoyable.
Youโre not constantly adjusting settings.
Eventually, you learn the fire.
And that, more than any individual component, is what an Argentine parrilla is really designed to help you do.
If youโre at the research stage, start with my DIY guide to building an Argentine parrilla.
If youโre ready to go further, Iโve also put together my complete Build & Grill Blueprint.
It includes the plans, measurements and videos behind building an Argentine-style grill, plus access to our community where we can help you through the process.
Build the parrilla. Learn the fire. Then get grilling.
An Argentine parrilla is a traditional grill designed for cooking asado over hot embers. Unlike many conventional BBQ grills, temperature is primarily controlled by managing the amount and position of the embers beneath the food. Many parrillas also incorporate a separate brasero for producing fresh embers throughout the cook.
A brasero is a fire cradle used to burn wood or charcoal until it produces hot embers. Those embers fall onto the hearth and can then be moved underneath different areas of the grill. This separates the active fire from the cooking area and gives you much greater control over heat.
Both designs have advantages. An adjustable grill lets you control heat by changing the distance between the food and embers. I personally prefer a fixed-height parrilla because I can keep the cooking distance consistent and regulate temperature entirely through ember management. As you gain experience, this can produce extremely consistent results.
V-shaped grates are common on Argentine grills, but I prefer round steel bars approximately 6โ10 mm thick. They retain heat well, are simple to clean and leave clean grill marks on steaks and cuts such as vacรญo. V-shaped channels can be useful for directing fat, but Iโve found they require more attention when cleaning accumulated grease and residue.
Yes. An Argentine-style outdoor grill station can be built using refractory materials, a suitable hearth, grill frame, cooking surfaces and ideally a dedicated area for producing embers. If youโre planning a DIY build, my separate How to Build Your Own Argentine Asado Grill guide covers the construction process, while my Build & Grill Blueprint goes into the plans, measurements and materials in greater detail.
Discover the first-ever English-speaking Argentine Asado DIY Building Guide, a digital experience designed to help you build your own authentic Asado grill, master the craft of Argentine grilling, and join our community that lives and breathes fire, food, and tradition.
Key Takeaways One of the questions I get asked surprisingly often is whether you should use wood or charcoal for Argentine asado. If youโve watched enough videos of asado in Argentina, youโve probably seen both. One parrilla might have large pieces of hardwood burning alongside the meat, while another has a bag of charcoal sitting [โฆ]
When most people think about Argentine asado, they picture meat sitting over an open parrilla with glowing embers underneath. Thatโs certainly at the heart of how I cook, but it isnโt the only cooking surface I use. One of the most useful components of my Argentine grill is actually a solid steel griddle, or plancha, [โฆ]
When most people picture an Argentine grill, one of the first things that comes to mind is the large wheel mounted beside the parrilla. Turn the wheel one way and the cooking grate rises away from the fire. Turn it the other way and the meat moves closer to the embers. Itโs one of the [โฆ]
