Night Market · Grilled Beef Heart Skewers

Anticuchos

📷 Closely related photo — Photo via Pexels/Unsplash — free for commercial use

The main ingredient is beef heart — once considered a scrap cut for the poor, it's now grilled and devoured as one of the country's favorite late-night treats.

Anticuchos are skewers of marinated beef heart, grilled over open coals alongside boiled potatoes and finished with a creamy peanut-and-yellow-chili sauce. Vendors fire up their grills around 7pm on street corners.

Why it's made this way: The dish's roots run through Andean tradition reworked under Spanish colonial cooking, and using heart reflects a practical, nose-to-tail approach to beef.