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Friday, December 11, 2015

Pando, Uruguay Knows Meat

Cipriani Carlo Lopez, Dec. 8, 2015

The Canelones Meat Festival gets stronger every year. It held its sixth annual festival last Sunday, for the first time in Artigas Park Pando.


The Rotary Club of Pando organized the event with the support of the Municipality and the meat industry in the area, which includes about ten refrigerator distributors.

To serve more than four thousand guests, this year brought in team grillers from the neighboring town of Progreso, located forty kilometers.

Alejandro Russian Matiaude was the cook in charge of 17 other Creole chefs, with amateur experience in the world of embers, but none dedicated professionally.

"I enjoy cooking and I've done it in several places, and decided I would do it. I am an amateur, but I have cooked for gatherings of three hundred or up to eight hundred people. But I don't make a living at that. I have a small hardware store and woodshed . I always like to give a hand, when there are parties with twenty or thirty friends, and I love it. I never wanted to charge anything. This time in Pando there was an entry fee."h e told Alejandro Russian, who assembled a group of roasters who included a brother, a cousin and friends who are familiar with firewood and barbecues, while making a living on a dairy farm, augmented with of apples, construction, a paint shop and a warehouse in a joint venture.

"At four-fifteen in the morning, we started from home. We turned on the heat at a quarter to five and worked until the six p.m. evening peak. The people were very happy. We estimate that we used ten thousand kilos of firewood and 2700 kilos of meat, all pulpones (pork shoulder), and grilled four thousand sausages. Then wet cut and cut like crazy, walking with pulpones shoulder from the grilling area to the serving area. The last of the meat was fire-grilled because we ran out. We made four rows of people to maintain order."



The ticket, for 390 pesos, included a chorizo, two generous portions of meat that people chose, bread and potato salad in individual containers.

Attendees took the dishes and place had available chairs and tables for seventy people each.
Organizers.

The festival of Pando was created to promote the city as the National Capital of the meat. The proceeds go to various organizations who donate materials and equipment.