How to Cook Flap Steak? 5 Secrets of Flap Meat
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 morning of the 25th. Half the country is already packed for the coast.
The template underneath is European, mostly Italian and Spanish, carried over by the immigration wave that shaped the food and the wine. Argentina kept the calendar and most of the dishes, then bent both around a summer that regularly hits 35°C (95°F) in Buenos Aires.
The southern hemisphere calendar puts the solstice on December 21. School years end in the first half of December, so Christmas arrives at the exact moment the country stops working. Offices thin out. The aguinaldo, the second half of the annual thirteenth-month bonus, has to be paid by December 18 by law, which means December is also the month with the most cash in circulation. January is the vacation month, when Buenos Aires empties and the Atlantic coast fills.
Four practical things change because of the heat.
Nothing heavy comes out of an oven. A roast bird in a kitchen at 33°C (91°F) makes the whole house unbearable, so the Christmas table is built from things made in advance and served cold.
The meal moves outdoors. Patios, terraces, rooftops, the strip of pavement in front of the house. Whoever has a quincho (covered outdoor kitchen area with a parrilla) hosts.
The timing moves late. Sitting down at 8pm in December means sitting down in full sun, because it stays light past 8:30pm. Ten o’clock is when it becomes pleasant.
Everyone is outside at midnight, which is why the fireworks work the way they do. You are not watching them from a window. You are standing under them.
Nochebuena on December 24 carries the entire holiday. Christmas Day is the recovery.
The evening runs to a shape that barely varies. Family arrives from about 9pm, later than they said. The table is set for 10 or 10:30. Fiambres (cured meats and cold cuts) and salads come out first, and people eat and drink and get up and sit down again for the next hour. Around 11:45 someone starts checking phones. At midnight everyone stands, glasses of sidra go up, and the room turns into fifteen minutes of hugging every single person present individually.
Then two things happen at once. The sky fills with fireworks, and the children are sent outside to look at them while an adult quietly puts the presents under the tree. Papá Noel arrives during dinner, not overnight. By ten past midnight the wrapping paper is on the floor.
Argentine children do not go to bed before this. A five-year-old still at the table at 1am on the 25th is normal and nobody comments on it.
After the presents come the desserts, and then sobremesa, the part of the meal where nobody eats and nobody leaves. That runs to two or three in the morning. Anyone under thirty then goes out to a boliche (nightclub), which open on Christmas night and are busy.
December 25 is deliberately empty. People sleep until midday. Lunch is late, and it is either leftover fiambres or a small asado with whatever meat was bought for the 24th and never cooked. Shops are shut. Nothing is planned. If a fire gets lit at all it gets lit at 3pm and eaten at 5, which is a slower and more relaxed version of a full Argentine asado than any other day of the year.
One local detail worth knowing: fireworks are now restricted or banned outright in a growing number of municipalities, with several districts prohibiting pyrotechnics that produce noise Enforcement varies enormously. In practice most of Greater Buenos Aires still sounds like a war zone at 12:01am.
Cold food is not a compromise here, it is the correct answer to eating at 30°C (86°F). The Nochebuena table is built around fiambres, ensalada rusa (potato, carrot and pea salad bound with mayonnaise), matambre arrollado (rolled stuffed flank), tomatoes with oil, and often lechón (suckling pig) in families that have somewhere to cook one.
Vitel toné is the dish that says Christmas more than any other. It descends from Piedmontese vitello tonnato and it is cold sliced peceto (eye of round) under a mayonnaise-based sauce of tuna, anchovy and capers. It is made the day before, because it improves in the fridge and because nobody wants to be cooking on the 24th. The full method and the argument about how thin the slices should be is in the guide to what vitel toné is and how to make it.
Dessert is Italian by descent. Pan dulce, the Argentine panettone, splits the country between candied fruit and chocolate chip, and the argument is genuine. Turrón, mantecol, garrapiñadas (candied peanuts), nueces and budín inglés go on the table together and get picked at until three in the morning.
Niños envueltos, stuffed rolls of beef or cabbage, appear more in the interior provinces than in Buenos Aires and are more of a family-recipe dish than a fixed tradition.
Asado is not the Nochebuena meal in most households, despite what visitors expect. It is the December 25 lunch, and it tends toward the simpler cuts rather than a full spread: chorizo, vacío, maybe a matambre. If you are cooking one and buying meat in a supermarket rather than a butcher, the naming gets confusing fast, and the breakdown of Argentine beef cuts and their international equivalents is worth reading before you go.
For the full Nochebuena menu, dish by dish, see the detailed guide to what Argentinians eat on Christmas.
The arbolito (Christmas tree) goes up on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and comes down on January 6. Those dates are followed closely enough that a tree still standing on January 10 gets remarked on. The trees themselves are artificial, small, and kept indoors, and the decoration is modest by North American standards. Nobody is projecting light displays onto the front of the house.
In traditional families the pesebre (nativity scene) matters more than the tree. It is set up in early December with the manger left empty, and the figure of the baby is placed in it at midnight on the 24th, usually by the youngest child in the house. That is the moment the religious observance actually happens for most families now, rather than at Misa de Gallo (midnight mass), which fewer households attend than a generation ago.
Children’s Christmas here has two gift days, not one. Papá Noel delivers at midnight on the 24th, and the Reyes Magos deliver on January 6, which keeps the whole season alive for a fortnight after the northern hemisphere has taken the decorations down.
December 31 repeats December 24 almost structurally: the same late dinner, the same fiambres, the same midnight toast, considerably more fireworks. The difference is what happens afterward. Nobody stays at the table. Younger family members leave around 1am for a party or a club and come back at seven in the morning, and January 1 is written off entirely.
The New Year table leans lighter than Christmas, and the traditional dishes that show up on it are covered in the collection of Argentine New Year recipes.
January 6 is Reyes Magos, the Epiphany. Children leave their shoes out the night before, along with grass and a bowl of water for the camels, and find gifts beside them in the morning. Rosca de Reyes, a ring-shaped sweet bread, is eaten that day. The tree comes down and the season closes.
Then the country leaves. January is when Buenos Aires becomes navigable, half the shops on any given street are shuttered with a handwritten sign, and Mar del Plata, Pinamar and Villa Gesell absorb the population that vanished from the city.
| Date | What happens | Public holiday |
| December 8 | Arbolito and pesebre go up | Yes |
| December 18 | Aguinaldo payment deadline | No |
| December 24 | Nochebuena. Dinner at 10pm, toast and gifts at midnight | No, but everything shuts by early evening |
| December 25 | Quiet day. Late lunch or a small asado | Yes |
| December 31 | Dinner, midnight toast, then out until dawn | No, shuts early |
| January 1 | Nobody moves | Yes |
| January 6 | Reyes Magos. Second gift day, rosca de Reyes, tree comes down | No |
Buenos Aires in December runs 30–35°C (86–95°F) with humidity that makes it feel worse, and the heat does not break until after dark. Peak electricity demand produces cortes de luz (power cuts) in the city most summers, and they cluster on the hottest days, which are frequently the days around Christmas. Patagonia and Bariloche are mild and get daylight until 10pm. The northwest, Salta and Jujuy, is in its rainy season, so expect heat plus afternoon storms.
Practical closures: December 25 and January 1 shut the country down, restaurants included, so a visitor with no plans on those days will find very little open. December 24 and 31 are half days, with shops closing between 5pm and 7pm. Supermarkets on December 23 and 24 are unpleasant.
If you are invited to a Nochebuena dinner, four things will keep you from getting it wrong. Arrive at 9:30 or 10, not 8. Bring sidra, pan dulce or a bottle of wine, and bring more than one of whatever you choose. Expect to be there past 2am. Do not leave straight after the midnight toast, which is the single most common visitor mistake and reads as though you came only for the formality.
Book coastal accommodation months ahead. January on the Atlantic coast is fully committed by October.
Sidra is the Christmas toast. Argentine cider is cheap, lightly sweet, low in alcohol, and drunk hard from the fridge, and it opens with the same pop as champagne for a fraction of the money. Real, La Victoria and 1888 are the bottles you will see on most tables. Families with money to spend switch to espumante or champagne, but sidra is what the majority actually opens at midnight.
Clerico is the other Christmas drink: white wine with chopped fresh fruit, macerated in the fridge for two to four hours, and not to be called sangria in front of anyone.
Ice goes in everything, including wine, and no apologies are made for it. This is the reason a heavy red is the wrong bottle for December: a structured Argentine Malbec served at 33°C (91°F) tastes like alcohol and nothing else. Serve a light red at 15–16°C (59–61°F), or a cold white, and it works with the cold cuts as well.
Fernet comes out after the toast, once the eating is done and the people who are going out have started to think about it.
The bottle that empties fastest on an Argentine Christmas table is none of these. It is the two-litre Coca-Cola in the middle, and it gets replaced twice before anyone opens the sidra.
Cold food, because of the heat. Fiambres, ensalada rusa and matambre arrollado, with vitel toné as the signature dish. Pan dulce, turrón and mantecol for dessert. Asado usually happens at lunch on December 25 rather than on Nochebuena.
Nochebuena on December 24 is the main event. Dinner starts around 10pm, the toast and the fireworks are at midnight, and gifts are opened straight afterward. December 25 is quiet, usually a late family lunch.
Yes, but small, artificial and indoors. The tree goes up on December 8 and comes down on January 6. In traditional families the pesebre matters more, with the baby placed in the manger at midnight on the 24th.
Buenos Aires runs 30–35°C (86–95°F) in late December, humid, and it stays light past 8:30pm. Patagonia is mild. The northwest is hot with afternoon storms. Power cuts are common on the hottest days.
Half past nine or ten, not eight. The table is set for around 10:30 and the night runs past 2am. Bring sidra, pan dulce or wine, and do not leave immediately after the midnight toast.
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