A Pizza Lover’s Guide to Buenos Aires: Discover the Icons of Argentine Pizza
Search for chimichurri and you will find seven or eight national versions presented as equivalent regional traditions. They are not equivalent, and pretending otherwise makes the whole subject harder to understand rather than easier.
Two of them are genuinely chimichurri: the Argentine and the Uruguayan, which developed together in the Río de la Plata and differ by less than most households differ from each other. One, the Brazilian, is a real adaptation with a traceable path. The rest are sauces that already existed in their own cuisines under their own names and picked up the word chimichurri somewhere along the way, frequently on a menu in Miami, Houston or London rather than in Havana, Lima or Bogotá.
None of that makes them worse. Cuban mojo is a better sauce for pork than chimichurri will ever be. It makes them different sauces, and knowing which one you actually want is the point of comparing them.
Everything below is measured against this, so it needs stating precisely.
Argentine chimichurri is flat-leaf parsley, dried oregano, garlic, red wine vinegar, oil, ají molido (coarse dried red pepper flakes) and coarse salt. It is chopped by hand. It is loose enough that oil separates and sits on top between stirs. It is made at least two hours ahead, and preferably the day before, because raw garlic and vinegar need time to stop being raw garlic and vinegar.
Three things it does not contain: cilantro, citrus, and tomato. Any of the three moves it into a different sauce, which is fine as long as nobody calls the result Argentine.
The dried oregano matters more than it looks. Fresh oregano is grassy and disappears against beef fat. Dried oregano rehydrates in the vinegar and holds its flavour for days in the fridge, which is why chimichurri improves overnight instead of wilting.
The origin is honestly unknown. Documentary evidence for the word before the late nineteenth century is thin, and the popular etymologies involving an Irishman called Jimmy McCurry or a mangled English request for curry are stories with no supporting record. What is reasonably established is the region: the Río de la Plata, shared between Argentina and Uruguay, in a cattle economy that needed something acidic to cut through a great deal of grilled beef.
The full method, ratios and resting time are in the step-by-step Argentine chimichurri recipe. This page is about what the other versions do differently.
Uruguay has the same claim to chimichurri that Argentina does, and any Argentine who tells you otherwise is arguing nationalism rather than food history. The sauce developed across the Río de la Plata in a single cattle culture that happened to have a border running through it.
The differences are small and they are not consistent enough to call rules. Uruguayan versions more often include finely chopped red bell pepper (morrón), which softens the acid and adds a faint sweetness. Some include a higher proportion of dried oregano relative to parsley. Commercial Uruguayan chimichurri sold in jars tends to be more heavily dried and more oregano-driven than its Argentine equivalent.
Where it goes is different too. Argentine chimichurri lives at the parrilla. Uruguayan chimichurri also gets spooned onto a chivito, the steak sandwich that functions as the national dish, in a role closer to a condiment than a table sauce.
If you gave a blind bowl of each to ten Argentines and ten Uruguayans, most would not reliably identify their own. That is the actual size of the difference.
This is the version most people arrive at this page looking for, so it is worth being clear about what it is.
Mexican chimichurri is cilantro rather than parsley, or cilantro and parsley together. Lime juice replaces some or all of the red wine vinegar. Fresh chilli goes in, usually serrano or jalapeño, in place of dried ají molido. Cumin appears in many recipes. It is blended smooth rather than chopped, which turns it from a loose spooning sauce into a thick green emulsion closer to a dressing.
Every one of those substitutions is a Mexican pantry doing what Mexican pantries do, and the result is a good sauce. It is also, functionally, a green salsa with an Argentine name attached. Mexico had cilantro-and-chilli sauces long before it had the word chimichurri, and salsa verde is not a copy of anything.
The name travelled through restaurants rather than through kitchens. Chimichurri became a menu word across the US in the 2000s, Mexican and Tex-Mex kitchens adapted it to ingredients they already had, and the label stuck.
Practical consequence: because it is blended and citrus-based, it breaks down faster. Argentine chimichurri holds a week in the fridge and improves. A blended cilantro-lime version goes dull and bitter in two or three days. Make it the same day you use it.
Use it on carne asada, on grilled chicken, on fish tacos. On a thick, heavily marbled cut it disappears, because a smooth emulsion has nothing to grip.
Brazil is the clearest case of genuine adaptation, and it is confusing because the word covers two products.
In most Brazilian supermarkets, chimichurri is a dry seasoning blend sold in a shaker: dried parsley, oregano, garlic powder, paprika, chilli, sometimes dried onion. It gets sprinkled on meat before it goes on the churrasqueira, so it functions as a rub, not a sauce. That is a genuine national usage and it has no Argentine equivalent.
The wet version exists too, and it is thicker than the Argentine original, less acidic, and usually contains finely diced bell pepper and sometimes tomato. The reason is sitting on the same table: molho à campanha, also called vinagrete, is the standard Brazilian churrasco sauce and it is built on tomato, onion, bell pepper and vinegar. Brazilian wet chimichurri is what happens when chimichurri meets vinagrete, and the vegetables win.
The lower acidity is deliberate rather than careless. Brazilian churrasco leans on picanha and heavily salted beef where a sharper sauce would fight the salt. Argentine asado is salted with coarse salt during cooking and nothing else, which leaves room for a more aggressive vinegar hit.
If you want the Brazilian effect without the confusion, make vinagrete and call it vinagrete. It is better at its job than a thickened chimichurri is.
Cuban cuisine has a garlic and citrus sauce that predates any contact with the Río de la Plata. It is called mojo, or mojo criollo, and it is naranja agria (sour orange) juice, a large quantity of crushed garlic, dried oregano, cumin, salt and oil, often warmed so the hot oil hits the garlic.
What gets sold as Cuban chimichurri is mojo, or mojo with parsley added and the name changed. The label appears mostly in Cuban-American restaurants in Florida, where a chimichurri line on the menu is understood by more customers than a mojo line.
The distinction is worth keeping because the two sauces do genuinely different jobs. Chimichurri is a raw, sharp, herb-heavy sauce spooned on after cooking. Mojo is a marinade first and a sauce second, it is frequently warmed, and citrus enzymes in sour orange actively tenderise. Marinate beef in mojo for eight hours and the surface turns mealy. Marinate pork shoulder in it overnight and you get lechón asado, which is one of the best things anyone does with a pig.
Cumin is the flavour tell. Cumin has no place in Argentine chimichurri and it is central to mojo.
The Peruvian version adds ají amarillo, the yellow chilli paste that runs through most of Peruvian cooking, and sometimes huacatay (black mint). Parsley or cilantro provides the green, lime often replaces vinegar, and the result is fruitier and considerably hotter than the Argentine original.
Peru already had its answer to this problem. Ají verde, the green sauce served with pollo a la brasa, is built on ají amarillo, huacatay, garlic and usually queso fresco or mayonnaise, which makes it creamy rather than loose. Salsa criolla, thin-sliced red onion with lime and ají, does the acid-cutting job at the table. Neither needed renaming.
Where Peruvian chimichurri genuinely appears is in Peruvian steakhouse cooking and in restaurants abroad serving both cuisines. It is a hybrid with a real function rather than a deep tradition, and it works: ají amarillo has an apricot-like fruitiness that sits well against charred beef in a way that dried red pepper flakes do not.
If you make it, keep the ají amarillo paste to a small proportion. It will dominate everything at anything above a spoonful per cup of sauce.
The Colombian table sauce is ají, sometimes called ají picante or ají criollo, and it is thinner than everything else on this list. Finely chopped cilantro, white or red onion, tomato, lime juice, vinegar, chilli and, unusually, water. It is served in a small bowl with a spoon and poured over empanadas, arepas and grilled meat.
The water is the structural difference. Chimichurri is an oil-based sauce that coats. Colombian ají is water-based and runs, and it is meant to soak into fried dough rather than sit on top of a steak.
Calling it chimichurri is a translation for foreign menus. Inside Colombia it is ají, and asking for chimichurri in a Bogotá restaurant will get you either a blank look or an Argentine steakhouse.
Made properly it is one of the better sauces here for anything fried, and it is the only version on this list that improves an empanada rather than competing with it.
The rule underneath all of this is matching acid to fat and texture to surface. Vinegar cuts rendered beef fat better than citrus does. Citrus suits pork and poultry, where the fat is lighter and the meat can take a bit of enzymatic softening. Chopped sauces grip a rough charred surface. Blended sauces slide off it and belong on softer or thinner cuts.
| Version | Herb base | Acid | Texture | Best with |
| Argentine | Flat-leaf parsley, dried oregano | Red wine vinegar | Chopped, loose | Vacío, tira de asado, bife de chorizo, provoleta |
| Uruguayan | Parsley, oregano, often morrón | Red wine vinegar | Chopped, slightly thicker | Chivito, chorizo, grilled beef |
| Mexican | Cilantro, sometimes parsley | Lime | Blended smooth | Carne asada, grilled chicken, fish |
| Brazilian (wet) | Parsley, bell pepper, sometimes tomato | Vinegar, lower proportion | Thick, chunky | Picanha, heavily salted beef |
| Brazilian (dry) | Dried parsley, oregano, paprika | None | Dry rub | Applied before grilling, not after |
| Cuban / mojo | Oregano, cumin, heavy garlic | Sour orange | Loose, often warmed | Pork shoulder, lechón, yuca |
| Peruvian | Parsley or cilantro, ají amarillo | Lime or vinegar | Loose to semi-smooth | Grilled beef, anticuchos, chicken |
| Colombian / ají | Cilantro, onion, tomato | Lime and vinegar | Thin, watery | Empanadas, arepas, fried food |
For grilled beef specifically, the Argentine and Uruguayan versions are not a matter of national preference. Beef fat renders and coats the palate, and a sharp vinegar-and-herb sauce with visible texture is the thing that resets it between bites. That is why the sauce exists in a cattle economy and why the cuts that dominate an Argentine parrilla are the ones it was built around.
For fish and chicken, the Mexican version wins outright. Lime and cilantro against a delicate protein is a better match than red wine vinegar and dried oregano, which will bury both.
For pork, use mojo and stop calling it chimichurri.
For vegetables, the Argentine version works on anything charred: courgette, aubergine, peppers, and particularly on grilled onion, where the vinegar plays against the sugar. Blended versions turn the plate into a green wash.
The reason chimichurri has seven national versions and, for instance, salsa criolla does not is that chimichurri went out on the back of Argentine beef. Steakhouse expansion through the US and Europe carried the word further than the recipe, and kitchens that had never seen ají molido built a green herb sauce out of what was in front of them.
That is a normal way for food to move, and it produced some good sauces. It also produced a lot of jarred product labelled Argentine that contains cilantro, lime and no oregano, which is where the confusion starts for most people cooking at home.
The identifying test is short. Chop, do not blend. Flat-leaf parsley and dried oregano. Red wine vinegar. Ají molido for heat. Rest it overnight. If a recipe hands you cilantro and a lime, it is a good sauce and it is not this one. That distinction, and the way a national sauce gets built out of what a cattle country happened to have, is part of the same story told in the cultural heritage of Argentine food.
The version that ends up on your table should be decided by what is on the grill. If it is beef over hardwood coals at a proper Argentine asado, there is one correct answer, and the reason is chemistry rather than patriotism.
It is an authentic Mexican sauce, not an authentic Argentine one. It uses cilantro instead of parsley, often lime instead of red wine vinegar, and is usually blended smooth rather than chopped. A good sauce, and a different sauce.
Brazilian wet versions are thicker, less acidic, and usually contain diced bell pepper, borrowing from vinagrete. In Brazil chimichurri is also sold as a dry seasoning blend used before grilling, which has no Argentine equivalent.
Argentina and Uruguay share it. The sauce developed in the Río de la Plata cattle culture on both sides of the river, and the two versions differ less than households do. Every other version is a later adaptation.
Not in the Argentine version. Cilantro changes the sauce into something else and clashes with dried oregano. If you want a cilantro-based green sauce, make the Mexican version properly rather than substituting into an Argentine recipe.
The Argentine version holds about a week and improves after the first day, because vinegar and oil preserve it. Blended citrus versions turn dull and bitter within two or three days. Make those the day you use them.
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 Christmas in Argentina: A 23-Year Resident Explains Local Traditions Christmas in Argentina falls three days after the summer solstice, and everything else follows from that. The meal is cold or cooked outdoors. It starts at 10pm when the heat finally drops. The main event is the night of December 24 rather than the […]
KEY TAKEAWAYS Argentina drinks differently from the rest of South America, and the difference is Italian. The immigration wave that arrived between 1880 and 1930 brought amaro, brought wine culture, brought the habit of drinking something bitter after a heavy meal. Layer that over a Guaraní stimulant, add a wine industry sitting at altitudes no […]
KEY TAKEAWAYS Flap Meat Steak: What It Is and How to Cook It the Argentine Way Flap meat steak is one of the most flavourful cuts on the animal and one of the most misunderstood. It is sold under a dozen names, confused with two other cuts it is not, and cooked wrong more often […]
