The Unknown Origins Of Chimichurri Sauce

When you think of the food of Argentina, the first thing that might come into your mind is a big, juicy steak. The high quality of Argentine beef is known the world over, from largely grass-fed and free-range cattle that roam across the vast plains that cover much of the country. Argentinian beef is so packed with flavor that it needs no adornment, save for a sprinkling of salt. But when a little extra boost is desired, there's one condiment that's the perfect complement: chimichurri.

This simple yet potent combination of oil, parsley, oregano, garlic, and vinegar is often served alongside beef, as well as other common Argentinian foods like empanadas. There are countless variations throughout the country, and indeed the world. Yet the sauce's true origin remains a mystery. 

Myths and rumors of its invention are easy to find, but hard to pin down — is it ancient or modern, native or European? We will likely never know the actual answers to these questions, but a trip through some moments in history, especially Argentina's, can give us some clues to how chimichurri may have entered our culinary world.

One popular story regarding chimichurri's origin bestows its invention on an Irishman named Jimmy McCurry. The story goes that this gentleman made his way from Ireland to Argentina sometime in the 19th century. Some stories paint him as a wandering musician, others as a mercenary who joined the fight to liberate the country from Spanish rule. Whatever the reason for his relocation, after a while, he began to dearly miss the Worcestershire sauce of his home, and decided to come up with a local substitute.

Worcestershire sauce is a fermented concoction that's vinegar-based and includes anchovies, tamarind, and garlic as its primary flavoring ingredients, as well as molasses for a touch of sweetness. Presumably, McCurry had a tough time tracking down a few of these staples in his new country, so he used what he had at hand instead, which happened to be herbs like parsley and oregano. He threw the sauce together and shared it with those around him, and it proved to be quite popular. People called it "Jimmy McCurry's sauce," or possibly "Jimmy's curry," which when filtered through English and Spanish language and accents became widely known as "chimichurri."

A very plausible origin for chimichurri comes from a big part of Argentinian history and culture: the gauchos. Similar in life and legend to the cowboys of North America, gauchos were nomadic horsemen who herded and hunted the cattle that once freely roamed the land. As these hardy horsemen ranged across the mountains and plains, meat was the main staple of their diet — particularly beef, due to the bounty of cattle around them. 

Their open-flame meat cooking techniques remain a major part of Argentinian cuisine today, with the tradition of the asado, in which people gather to prepare a meat-heavy feast cooked in a very specific way over fiery coals. Chimichurri is commonly served at these meals, often as the only condiment. 

Did chimichurri, along with asado, also come from the traditions of the gauchos? It stands to reason that these men, looking to add flavor to their meals, would have been able to easily find wild herbs, and with a few other basic ingredients, make chimichurri. A small container of the sauce would have been light and easy to transport by horse, with the vinegar used as a preservative to keep it from spoiling, and just a spoonful would be enough to pack a hefty punch of flavor.

Yet another tale of chimichurri's origin involves war. In the early 19th century, British armies invaded the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was part of an attempt to take control of the Spanish colonies in the region known as Rio de la Plata. Spain — from fighting their own battles in Europe — was unable to help stop this incursion, so it became up to the local people to fight back. Eventually, after several years of battling, the invaders were defeated.

As the legend goes, many British soldiers were held captive by the local fighters. While in captivity, the prisoners attempted to ask for food, using the word "curry." Between the multiple language barriers, like in a game of telephone, this request for curry became "chimichurri," and the word became associated with the sauce that was served with the prisoners' meals.

Of course, without a time machine, it's impossible to know if there's any truth to this story. But respected Argentinian figure Miguel Brascó, a noted writer and gourmand, believed this origin story.

Basque people have long been a part of Argentina, possibly since the era of Spanish colonization. Later, in the 19th and 20th centuries, a large influx of Basques made their way to Argentina. As with all mass migrations, they brought with them their unique language, culture, and cuisine.

The Basques have known the world over for their exceptional food — with the Basque Country's proximity to both ocean and mountains, it's a cuisine that celebrates surf and turf, as well as a bounty of local fresh produce. All of the ingredients found in chimichurri can be commonly found in Basque cooking, so it's not a huge leap to imagine that these culinary-minded expats may have brought the sauce with them across the Atlantic.

Another fact that gives this origin weight is the name itself — chimichurri. There is a Basque word, tximitxurri, which translates roughly to mean a random mixture of things, a hodgepodge or mishmash. This description could certainly apply to the sauce. It's hard to ignore the etymological evidence here, so it seems very likely that Basque settlers had at least some part in introducing chimichurri to Argentinian cuisine.

From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, millions of Italians moved from their homeland to Argentina. As a result, Italian culture has had a huge influence on Argentina, from art to architecture to food. Many of the folks who made the journey came from Sicily, an island that has a sauce called salmoriglio. One look at the ingredients and you'll notice it bears a striking resemblance to chimichurri.

Parsley, oregano, and garlic make up the main flavoring components of salmoriglio, just like chimichurri. However, the liquid base is slightly different: salmoriglio uses lemon juice as its acidic ingredient rather than vinegar, likely because lemons are quite abundant in Sicily. 

Salmoriglio is also used similarly to chimichurri, except that it's most commonly spooned atop seafood rather than beef. Sicilians who came to Argentina undoubtedly brought their recipe for this sauce with them. It was then likely adjusted to fit local ingredients and better suit the more meat-heavy cuisine of Argentina.

The Quechua, a people native to the mountainous Andes regions of South America, may have been the first creators of chimichurri. As an agriculturally-focused community, cooking is an important part of Quechua culture. They also have a distinct family of languages of the same name, Quechua, which were officially adopted by the Incas. The Quechua language thus spread widely during the time of the Incan empire, around the 15th century. This ancient language is still spoken by native speakers in parts of South America today, and many words have made their way into everyday speech — and one of these words may be the key to unlocking chimichurri's origins.

According to the BBC, historian Daniel Balmaceda believes that the word chimichurri itself comes from the Quechua tongue. While it doesn't refer to the sauce exactly as we know it today, it can be translated to mean any type of sauce that is meant to go with meat, either as a marinade or preservative or to be served alongside it as a condiment. It seems likely that at some point through the centuries, the Quechua would have come up with a recipe similar to the one we know today, even if the word didn't become associated with this specific chimichurri sauce until much later.

Whichever one of these origin stories — or a combination of them — is closest to the truth, one thing we can confidently presume is that the original chimichurri sauce was made with dried herbs. The process of drying herbs to preserve them, whether by leaving them in the sun or in a specialized well-ventilated room, has been utilized for millennia. Since the sauce has undoubtedly been around since before the invention of refrigeration, dried herbs — possibly dried garlic, as well — would have been preferred in order to extend the sauce's shelf life.

Fresh herbs certainly could have been used in some preparations — particularly if the chimichurri was going to be consumed immediately. Plus, the vinegar component of the sauce acts as a preservative, thanks to the acidity level which keeps harmful microorganisms at bay. But for soldiers, gauchos, and the mountain-inhabiting Quechua, using dried herbs would have made more sense, allowing the batch of chimichurri to last as long as possible and to best prevent the possibility of spoilage, which could lead to foodborne illnesses.

Before the invention of fancy tools like immersion blenders and food processors, sauces like chimichurri were made by hand. The painstaking methods people used to prepare foods in centuries past may seem too fussy and time-consuming for our modern minds, but if you want to experience food the authentic way it's meant to taste, you need a little elbow grease to get the best results.

The mortar and pestle have existed in cultures across the world for thousands of years, used to grind and crush herbs and spices for culinary and medicinal purposes. Chimichurri is not meant to be a silky pureed sauce — it's meant to have texture, and using a mortar and pestle gives it that, while still allowing the ingredients to fuse together. A food processor or blender heats up ingredients with its whirling blades, which can ruin the vibrancy of fresh herbs, while a mortar and pestle gently release their flavorful and aromatic oils. With garlic, a food processor's harsh cutting motion can release bitter compounds, causing unpleasantly sharp and pungent flavors. A mortar and pestle, on the other hand, makes it easy to crush the cloves into a fragrant paste. 

If you don't have a mortar and pestle to recreate traditional chimichurri, finely chopping the ingredients by hand is the next best option. This will give you a version that's closer to being authentic than one created using an electronic device.

One of the reasons chimichurri's true origin is so murky is that there is very little written record of it before modern times. Perhaps it's ancient, perhaps only a few hundred years old, we will never know for sure. But what we do know is that it began to appear in published cookbooks in the 20th century, around the 1950s. A recipe appears in Time-Life's "Foods of the World" book series, a collection of books that explored different cuisines around the globe that was published around the 1960s and 1970s. 

This lack of a definitive history or recipe gives chimichurri an air of timelessness and mystery, which may contribute to the many somewhat fantastical stories of its creation. What is clear is that it's a sauce that's been around for a long time. It has become an everyday staple of Argentinian cuisine, but it's also loved the world over.

Looking through recipes for chimichurri, you'll often see it called "Argentinian pesto." But aside from their similar color, there is not much connecting these two sauces, and no evidence suggesting that chimichurri is a derivative of pesto, or vice versa. Chimichurri has much more in common with Sicily's salmoriglio sauce — when it comes to similar ingredients and uses — than it does with pesto, with which it shares only oil and garlic.

Unlike chimichurri, pesto Genovese, the most widely known style, has an officially sanctioned recipe that delineates not just the proper amounts of ingredients, but also their origins. Pesto's main ingredient is fresh basil. Cheese is a major component of pesto, as well as pine nuts, both noticeably absent from chimichurri in any form — these two ingredients give the pesto a thicker, creamier texture than chimichurri. 

Another noticeable departure between the two sauces is the lack of acid in the pesto. While many pesto recipes do call for the addition of lemon juice, the official recipe omits it. This makes a huge difference flavor-wise between the two sauces, as chimichurri's vinegar component adds an intense and distinct tanginess. Plus, pesto is most often tossed with pasta, not served with beef.

The asado is an Argentinian tradition that can be traced back to the gauchos. Cattle brought across the Atlantic by Spanish colonizers were left to roam the countryside and became the primary source of income and food for the horsemen who roamed with them.

The gauchos would cook the beef they harvested from these cattle using various open flame techniques, sometimes cooking on an iron grate placed directly over hot wood or coals, known as a parilla. These traditional methods are still used and celebrated today as family and friends gather regularly for asados, in which bountiful amounts of meat are cooked and shared.

In preparing beef for an asado, traditionally nothing more than salt is needed — marinades or dry rubs are not desired, as they mask the natural flavor of the meat. Low and slow is the way to go, with larger cuts often taking hours before they're ready. As the meat is typically served without any flavorings, those who want an extra boost will usually have chimichurri, and sometimes salsa, available to add to their dish — that's it. The meat, and good company, are the stars of the show, and chimichurri is one of the few co-stars invited to share the stage.

Though traditionalists and purists will insist on sticking with the most basic, authentic recipe — dried parsley and oregano, garlic, oil, and red wine vinegar — chimichurri is a fantastically versatile base that can be played with to create all kinds of delicious variations. There's no reason to limit oneself to one version, especially considering the abundance of ingredients we have available at our fingertips today.

You'll often find chimichurri made with cilantro, either in addition to or instead of parsley and oregano, which adds a bright pungency to the sauce. Citrus juice can be substituted for vinegar to give it a fruitier tang, such as in this chimichurri recipe. Jalapenos or other peppers can be added to ramp up the heat for those who like a kick. There are plenty of dried spices that can be included for more dimension, such as fennel, cumin, and coriander. 

Red chimichurri is a commonly found variation, which is made with dried red chile powder and paprika instead of green herbs. Including smoked paprika makes this chimichurri particularly satisfying when served with grilled steak.