Argentine · Main
Matambre Arrollado
- Advanced
- 2 h 30 m
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with a warm current of chile, acid holding everything up to the light, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 1 whole matambre (thin flank/rose meat, ~1kg), trimmed to even thinness, the name means 'hunger killer'
- Marinade: garlic, oregano, chili flakes, vinegar, 2 h minimum
- The filling mosaic: 3 hard-boiled eggs, roasted red pepper strips, blanched carrot batons, spinach leaves, olives
- Butcher's twine and a confident rolling technique
- Simmering broth (or a covered roasting tray with stock), then cold, pressed, and sliced
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
BraisingBlanching & shockingMarinating: acid, salt and timeKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
The words inside
Searing & Pan TechniqueSpinach
Allergen screen
Found: egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Lay the marinated matambre flat, fat side down; carpet with spinach; arrange carrots, peppers and whole eggs in lanes ACROSS the rolling direction.
- Roll tight as a sleeping bag; tie snug at intervals; wrap in cloth or foil.
- Simmer submerged in seasoned broth 1.5 h (or braise covered); then press under a weighted board in the fridge overnight. 300 min
- Unwrap; slice thick rounds to reveal the stained-glass cross-section. Serve cold or room temp with chimichurri and bread.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Braising 39 recipes
- The pieces went into the liquid already deep brown on their faces, and the pot floor gave up its fond to that liquid rather than keeping it.
- The liquid comes partway up the pieces and stays there for the whole cook (not submerged, not run dry), and it never boils: the surface trembles and no more.
- It went long enough for the collagen to convert: a fork twists in it with almost no resistance, and the piece still lifts out whole rather than falling into shreds.
- The liquid has become a sauce: it has body, it coats the back of a spoon, and it tastes concentrated rather than thin and washed out.
- The meat is moist and seasoned through to its centre, not dry fibres sitting inside a good sauce.
Where it goes wrong The oven or the burner ran too hot and the liquid boiled, so the fibres tightened and squeezed their moisture out: it shreds dry into a thin greasy liquid, and more time makes it worse rather than better.
Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes
- Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
- The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
- It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
- The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
- Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.
Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Syrah (northern Rhône) or Nebbiolo
- Also Right
- The braising wine itself, better bottle
- From the Taps
- Belgian dubbel
- Zero-Proof
- Beet & blackcurrant shrub
Long-cooked beef trades bite for depth: savory, structured reds echo the pot; and pouring the braise’s own region is law.
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