Chacarero Chileno (Chilean Steak and Green Bean Sandwiches)

My introduction to chacarero Chilena, the Chilean sandwich of grilled meats and green beans, was at a sandwich shop in Downtown Crossing in Boston more than 20 years ago during my freshman year of college. The sandwich would become a lunchtime staple for me for the next decade or so. From what Google tells me, that shop is still there (though it seems to have expanded from a street-side window to a sit-down affair), but I haven't had the sandwich there in years.

I have a strong suspicion that, as with many of my older taste memories, the idea of that sandwich is probably better than the reality, which leaves me a little hesitant to go back and try it.*

*Can someone from Boston please report back? Is it as great as I remember?

But great taste memories like that, even if they are rose-tinted, offer us a great benefit: They give us a bar to aspire to when re-creating the dish at home. In honor of my memories of freshman-year me, I decided to head into the kitchen (and out to the patio) to try to bring that vision of the perfect chacarero from my head into reality. 

In Chile, it’s rare to prepare a chacarero at home. Chileans typically eat this steak and green bean sandwich—and most other types of sandwich—at local fuentes de soda, special restaurants serving only (or mainly) sandwiches. The meat is typically brushed with garlic-scented oil and cooked briefly on a giant flattop griddle so that it remains rosy and tender inside. It's then set on a bun and topped with a layer of juicy raw tomatoes, a mound of tender cooked green beans, and thin slices of fresh yellow chiles. Enjoying a freshly prepared chacarero at a fuente de soda is incomparable, but this experience shouldn’t be limited to Chile alone, so we’ve come up with a few tricks to approximate the experience no matter where you live.

The Beef

While the beef is a key part of a chacarero, the flavor and volume comes mostly from the other ingredients on it. “Meat is not the main character, but a part of a whole, integrated flavor experience,” explains Serious Eats contributor Isidora Díaz, a Chilean food writer who specializes in traditional Chilean food and South American grilling. “Chacarero” means "from the orchard," and this seasonal sandwich is as much a celebration of fresh summer produce as it is about the meat. In Chile, the sandwich is usually reserved for the peak of spring and summer, when green beans are at their best. 

In most fuentes de soda, the meat of choice for chacareros is top round or sirloin. If cooked correctly, even these affordable and lean cuts can stay fairly tender, though they do run a higher risk of drying out and becoming tough compared to some other cuts of beef. “Posh Chilean restaurants in Santiago also offer the sandwich made with tenderloin or strip loin, charging a bit more for it,” says Díaz. 

Though they are not traditional, I personally like to turn to more substantially beefy, loosely textured cuts, like hanger, skirt, or flap meat. I happen to live a block away from a Mexican butcher shop that sells skirt and thinly sliced flap meat for fajitas and tortas, which are perfect for this sandwich.

If you're shopping at a regular supermarket, ask the butcher if they can butterfly some hanger or flap meat for you. If not, whole skirt steak will work just fine. The key is to pound it nice and thin, to about a quarter-inch thickness or thinner.

No matter what cut of beef you use, a rapid and intense sear is the key to making it robust and flavorful without overcooking it. In Chile, a huge, flattop griddle is the standard tool for this, though in my own testing I was able to get better flavor by cooking the beef directly on a grill directly over very hot coals. That said, a cast iron skillet or stovetop griddle will work; just make sure you get them extremely hot.

Usually el maestro sanguchero, the person in charge of the griddle, keeps a squirt bottle with vegetable oil on hand. In most places, according to Díaz, a garlic clove is placed inside the bottle to lightly flavor the oil, and this oil is squirted onto the griddle before cooking the meat. You can do this more traditional garlic-oil method by briefly heating some oil with a clove of garlic in the microwave for about 30 seconds, then letting it infuse for another ten minutes before removing the clove, but I've settled on a technique I learned from my friend Meathead Goldwyn, of AmazingRibs.com: coating the meat with mayonnaise. I make the mayo extra garlicky to mimic the garlic oil of the traditional method, then brush it all over the beef before cooking. It works much the same way as the oil (mayo is mostly oil, after all), but it improves your ability to get a deep sear on the meat while keeping the inside pink and tender.

The oil in mayo provides ample fat that is great at distributing heat evenly, but the additional presence of proteins from the egg allows for more rapid browning. And because mayo is a thick emulsion, it stays put on the surface of the meat, keeping more of the flavor on your food instead of dripping off it. I've recently tried grilling fish, steaks, pork chops, and chicken with flavored mayo coatings and have had great success with all of them. (Daniel also uses the technique for his broiled salmon.)

You could, of course, make aioli from scratch, but in a recipe like this, I find it easier and just as effective to stir some minced garlic and extra-virgin olive oil into store-bought mayo. You'll get something that tastes almost as good as homemade aioli, but with about 30 seconds of actual work.

The result is a smashing success. The mayonnaise browns well over the heat of the grill, and the meat is able to achieve a nice char while still remaining a juicy pink in the center—no small feat for such a thin cut of meat! (It worked equally well in a cast iron skillet, though it does create quite a bit of smoke, which requires some elbow grease to clean up.)

The Green Beans

The green beans they served at that old chacarero joint in Boston were drab army green, and well past the al dente that restaurant chefs love. Indeed, most recipes call for green beans that are cooked until fully tender. When I first started thinking about making my own version of this sandwich, I figured that keeping the green beans snappy and fresh would be a no-brainer. But, as I made a few sandwiches and tasted them, it turned out that snappy and fresh is not always best. When they're crisp, they have trouble integrating into the sandwich.

When tender, however, the beans become part of a seamless whole. Cutting them sharply on a bias makes them a little more manageable as well. I cooked my beans in a pot of salted water until they were fully softened, a good two to three minutes longer than I typically would.** I then drained them and ran them under cold water to stop them from cooking any further. (We normally recommend using an ice bath to chill vegetables after blanching, which you can read about here, but since these beans are allowed to be softer than normal, it's not necessary here at all.)

** Just writing about overcooking green beans makes me feel naughty. Is this what people who get off on shoplifting feel as they slip a fidget spinner into their pocket? Sometimes it feels so good to be bad. (In truth, it's not the first time we've broken bad on the green beans front: Daniel has written about his love of overcooked green beans before.)

Avoiding the ice bath, though, doesn't mean we can't still keep the beans a brighter green than they'd typically look after a lengthy boil. There's some science we can throw at these beans to keep them looking fresh while also softening them fully! Díaz suggests adding 1/4 teaspoon baking soda to the water, a technique widely used in Chilean fuentes de soda. This creates a slightly alkaline cooking environment, which weakens the beans' cell walls, speeding softening without having to cook them for as long. At the same time, the alkaline environment helps preserve the chlorophyll's more vibrant green color even as the beans reach full tenderness (it's a method Sasha has used in this bright vegetable pasta sauce, for precisely the same effect).

The Chiles

Sliced raw chiles are another critical component of a chacarero. According to Díaz, ají cristal chiles are the go-to in Chile: “Chilean cristal peppers are mildly spicy, like serranos or jalapeños, but also highly aromatic, which makes this sandwich truly stand out,” she says. If you can’t find ají cristal peppers, Díaz recommends substituting fresh lemon drop peppers or hot yellow banana peppers. Peruvian Limo peppers also work well, especially if available in yellow (they come in all colors). In a pinch, sliced, raw jalapeños are a good replacement, but of course you’ll lose the bold yellow accent in the final presentation.

Other Toppings

Juicy tomato slices—ideally a ripe heirloom variety, but beefsteak will work as well—are another critical component of the chacarero. Díaz says that tomatoes are typically peeled for sandwiches in Chile, so feel free to peel your tomatoes if you’d like. With or without skin, just make sure you salt your tomatoes before using them in sandwiches—properly seasoning every component is critical to sandwich success.  

At the chacarero shop in Boston, you could get your top bun spread with smashed avocado, but I preferred my sandwich without it. Díaz points out that while avocado is not a classic topping for a chacarero, “in Chile, any sandwich can be ordered with extras, and avocado is a very common extra on any sandwich”. So feel free to smash away your future of home ownership if you'd like avocado on your sandwich. “In a good sandwich place in Chile, an avocado topping would be between a half to a whole mashed avocado,” Díaz says.

As for other toppings, while Díaz says that most Chilean sandwiches are served with a liberal slather of mayonnaise, the chacarero is an exception—no mayo, no butter. “The juiciness comes from the layer of sliced, ripe tomatoes,” she says, adding that the spiciness of the hot peppers also mitigates the need for added fat. “It really works beautifully,” she says. That said, while the sandwich never automatically comes with mayo on it, people in Chilean fuentes de soda often order the chacarero with an "agregado" (extra) of mayonnaise. I'm with them: I like to make extra aioli to both slather on the meat before cooking and to serve on the finished sandwich. “Mayo in Chile is considered an ingredient or a topping in sandwiches, not a condiment,” Díaz explains, adding that if you get an agregado of mayo in a fuentes de soda, it will likely be about a half cup per sandwich. “It is always real mayo, made daily, and fuentes de soda take special pride in it.”.

The Bread

There's no sandwich without the bread (that's right, KFC Double-Down, you heard me).  Frica or marraqueta rolls are traditional for this recipe, but if you can’t find either of those, telera, ciabatta, or Portuguese rolls are a good substitution; even a crusty kaiser would work in a pinch. “The roll for this sandwich should have a dense crumb with a crusty exterior,” says Díaz.

Once the sandwich is assembled, you’ll be tempted to dive into it with both hands, but Díaz recommends serving a chacarero the Chilean way—with a serrated knife and fork for a true fuentes de soda experience. Díaz says the taller and messier a chacero is the better. “It’s a good thing for a Chilean sandwich to be unmanageable,” she adds, so if you need a knife and fork, you’ve made your chacarero properly.