Peru's iconic street skewer: slices of beef heart marinated in ají panca chile, vinegar, and cumin, seared over charcoal by anticucheras and served with boiled potato and corn. The dish fuses pre-Columbian llama-meat grilling with ingredients and technique from enslaved African cooks of the colonial era.
Also known as: anticucho, anticucho de corazón, Peruvian heart skewers, anticuchera
Watch it made
Ingredients
- 800 g beef heart, trimmed of veins, fat and silverskin
- 80 g aji panca paste
- 60 ml red wine vinegar
- 4 garlic cloves, mashed
- 1 tbsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- Salt, black pepper and 30 ml oil
- Boiled waxy potatoes and choclo corn
- Aji sauce, to serve
How to make it
- 1
Slice the cleaned heart into pieces about 1 cm thick and 4 cm wide.
- 2
Stir panca paste, vinegar, garlic, cumin, oregano, oil, salt and pepper into a loose slurry and marinate the heart 4 hours or overnight.
- 3
Thread 3-4 pieces flat onto each skewer and save the marinade.
- 4
Sear over scorching charcoal 2-3 minutes per side, painting with the reserved marinade at every turn (street vendors use a corn-husk brush).
- 5
Plate with golden potatoes and a wheel of choclo, aji sauce alongside.
Pro tip: Heart behaves like lean steak, not like offal: it is pure muscle and has two good states, briefly seared and rosy or braised for hours. The three-minute window on fierce heat is your target; a minute past it and you are chewing rubber.
