Easy Argentinian Chimichurri Sauce Recipe

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My easy chimichurri sauce recipe is made with extra virgin olive oil, fresh herbs, red pepper flakes, and is one of my favorite recipes! It's a fresh sauce that's perfect over steak, dipping bread into, serving with vegetables, or using as a wonderful marinade for your proteins this grilling season.

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When I was a kid, my mama used to buy chimichurri out of a jar when I was a teen and serve it with crusty bread when we had guests over.

So when I got married and had our friends over in San Antonio, Texas, I would do the same thing, but could not find a jar of chimichurri at HEB for the life of me! So I made it instead, it was a super easy thing for a 19 year old newlywed to make, along with homemade focaccia.

Chimichurri is seriously my favorite homemade sauce. It's a beautiful green sauce made with fresh ingredients that requires no cooking and tastes even better when made ahead, perfect for busy summer months!

Origins of Chimichurri

Barbecues and grilling over open fire has always been a huge thing in South America and Central America. From the origins of churrasco, birria de res (and the popular birria tacos), carne asada and those Brazilian gaucho steakhouses, they've been creating amazing food from basic ingredients for millennia.

Chimichurri is like an OG homemade bbq sauce. It reigns from Argentina, where grilled meat is most often served with an authentic and easy Argentinian chimichurri sauce.

The most common backstory is that the word chimichurri is actually a play on the inventor of the owner's name: Jimmy Curry, or Jimmy McCurry, who was an Irish expat in the 1800s who was either the owner of a meat market, an adventurer, a blind fiddle player, or a soldier. It depends on who is telling the story.

Anyway, this pesto-like sauce is credited to this man as "jimmy’s curry" which was colloquialized into "chimichurri", an herbed sauce made with simple ingredients.

What is Chimichurri Sauce Made of?

Chimichurri is like an amped up parsley pesto without the pine nuts, it has similar ingredients and is a green, uncooked sauce. But instead of cheese, basil, and pine nuts, we have fresh flat-leaf parsley, fresh oregano, sometimes fresh cilantro, an acidic component like lemon or lime juice, and red chili pepper.

Ingredients for Chimichurri Verde:

Flat leaf parsley, oregano, and (sometimes) cilantro. I absolutely love the addition of cilantro, but I know that the soap-gene folks don't, so just use parsley. There's no such thing as too much parsley!

Garlic cloves. Use fresh garlic, not the stuff in the jar.

Red onion. I personally prefer shallots, which have a more mild bite than red onion, so that's what I use in this recipe.

Red chili flakes. It brings a little kick, but if you're not into spice you can omit it. You could also use fresh red chili peppers like chile de arbol.

Good quality olive oil. Traditional chimichurri sauce calls for extra virgin olive oil, but if you're not a fan of the really fruit flavor you can use a mix of light olive oil and extra virgin or just the light olive oil.

Sea salt. Kosher salt is also great, but I find the coarse sea salt gives great flavor!

The great thing is that this is such a versatile sauce not only in what it can be used as (salad dressing, marinade, serving sauce, dipping sauce) but also in our ingredient checklist! For our bright, zippy acidic element there are plenty of different things you could use.

How to Make it

In an authentic recipe, they use red wine vinegar or white wine vinegar. It's really common to use fresh lemon juice since it gives less vinegar flavor and more 'bright and fresh' to the sauce's flavor, and that's what I like to do. Change the amount of vinegar or try apple cider vinegar or rice wine vinegar for a different take depending on what you like.

Our classic chimichurri recipe for the bunches of leaves torn from the stems of the fresh herbs and put them into the bowl of a food processor. We don't want the stems because they can make your chimichurri bitter as it sits (especially the cilantro stems) and oregano stems are woody.

Next add all the other ingredients, adding the olive oil and acidic vinegar or lemon juice last.

Blend on low speed until the herbs, garlic, and shallot are all chopped up finely and blended up together with the oil.

You can make this in a small food processor or blender with ease, you don't need a full size food processor.

You can also make this by hand with a sharp knife by chopping everything up on a cutting board, even turning the garlic into garlic paste by mashing it onto the board with coarse salt and the flat side of your knife, then whisk everything together in a small bowl.

What to Serve Chimichurri Sauce with

Some of my favorite ways to serve this delicious sauce is by serving it over churrasco, which is flank steak or skirt steak marinaded in mojo and grilled. I also really enjoy it as a marinade for pork, chicken or fish, it's really good! Imparts so much flavor.

It's also great as a sauce to any of your healthy recipes, including veggie burgers and grilled veggies. I love making chimichurri potatoes and chicken, they're really easy recipes.

And of course, as a dipping sauce for bread like my mama serves it.

How to Store it

The best part about chimichurri is that it gets even better as it sits! The ingredients being able to mingle together bring the flavors to the next level. You can make it ahead the day of and keep it at room temperature until serving time, but you need to store the sauce in an air tight container (or a medium bowl covered in plastic wrap) in the fridge otherwise.

Want to keep it for long term? Use ice cube trays to make serving size cubes of frozen chimichurri sauce to keep on hand! They're great for throwing into a pan to give flavor to any dish you're making.

Love sauces? Check these recipes out:

• The Everything Tomato Sauce
• The Everything Cheese Sauce
• Homemade Creme Fraiche
• My super popular Homemade Bang Bang Sauce (Bonefish Grill Copycat)
• Easy From-Scratch Alfredo Sauce

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