Photo: Filip Lachowski
1. Yerba mate in a very bull’s testicle gourd
At this really is essential, the famous Argentine drink yerba mate isn’t that unusual anymore. You can find it in virtually any health or smoothie shop in the us and Europe today. What’s unusual (and in actual fact pretty awesome) about mate in Argentina is the way it’s consumed. Unlike the usa, mate is in fact always served hot in Argentina, and it is served loose-leaf within a actual gourd. You then fill the gourd with water, and a special straw having a filter on the tip is used to suck the water out. It’s a lot like drinking tea by sucking water straight throughout the tea bag: super strong, and pretty delicious.
Argentines also make drinking mate right communal event: the single gourd is passed around, similar to a communal bong, from person to person. The weirdest it gets is where the outdoors of your gourd is roofed in — I’m not kidding — the epidermis at a bull’s testicles. However if you can obtain after dark initial “ick” of “I’m touching a bull’s testicles,” the ceremony is truly a nice aspect to indulge in.
2. Dulce de leche with mendicrim
Dulce de leche is largely pure heaven. It’s a favorite dessert through a wide range of Latin America, and even though its name means “Sweet of milk,” it tastes a lot more like a liquid caramel. It’s totally delicious without treatment, which is why it’s inexplicable that Argentines often mix it with mendicrim (basically a variety of sour cream).
It should really be inexplicable, but it’s not. The mendicrim makes the whole dulce de leche creamy plus more delicious. The two also go together when you’re making a chocotorta, which accurately results in chocolate cake. And you only can’t mess that up.
3. Just about all the cow
If you’re in Argentina and you’re starving steak, you’re working wrong. Argentine beef is just about the very best in the whole world (and it also goes very well with a Mendoza malbec), but Argentines don’t stop with your typical cuts of beef. They prefer all the cow inside their famous parrilladas, or barbecues.
The parrillada typically includes your normal cuts of delicious steak, additionally it throws some weirder parts in there, like chinchulines (cow’s intestine) and, certainly, the world-famous blood sausage. Several other organs are often used too — in doing my first parrillada, I\’d a cow kidney and even mollejas, or “sweetbread,” or even a cow pancreas. It sometimes could sound strange, it all combines quite well, and results in a special meal.
Outside on the parrillada, Argentines also eat dishes like lengua a la vinagreta, the industry cow tongue cured in vinegar and cooked in oil with spices.
4. Criadillas
Continuing inside the “all-of-the-cow” tradition: Criadillas in the nation these are known as “Rocky Mountain Oysters,” or, to remain more straightforward, bull testicles. But don’t allow that hold you back — don’t knock bull testicles until you’ve tried bull testicles. They’re actually pretty delicious, since they are fried and are generally usually served that has a testy (sorry, I meant tasty) salsa.
5. Rodent empanadas
It’s really challenging to wreck empanadas. That gets to empanadas de carpincho. Carpincho is definitely the Argentine word for any capybara, the world’s largest rodent. But meat is meat, and capybara meat is extremely good meat — so once you get over your queasiness regarding eating a rodent, you’ll keep returning to get more.
6. Fernet and coke
Argentine mixology is actually a field that doesn’t really need to exist — america has a lot delicious wine it’s a wonder that searchers ever drink anything. Just one of your country’s popular cocktails is Fernet and Coke, that would, on its face, be disgusting, given that it includes Fernet.
If you haven’t had it, Fernet is actually a 90-proof spirit that tastes, as SF Weekly place it, like “black licorice-flavored Listerine.” But Coca-Cola, the world’s greatest mixer, actually serves to fit the licorice flavor pretty much. So try Fernet and coke since the digestif after your meal of Bull testicles and rodent empanadas to truly round out your delicious Argentine meal.
