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Uncle Marv’s Peruvian Anticucho bacon is inspired by the famous street food popular in many South American countries. Anticucho traces its roots to the Incan Empire in the 16th century, around the time of the Spanish conquistadors who were rapidly colonizing the South American continent. It is a food that was in fact born out of a stark necessity.
Many Incans were enslaved by their conquerors, and numerous African slaves were also forcibly transplanted to the area that would become modern-day Peru. During the colonial era, when it came to food, the Spaniards would generally keep the best, “prime” cuts of meat to themselves, while dismissing as inferior peasant food the “off” cuts such as beef hearts and other organ meat. The enslaved peoples, having to make do with meat that is tough and not as flavorful as the choice cuts, quickly learned how to use the various local ingredients available to them in order to create a tender, meticulously seasoned cuisine that is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Utilizing chilis as well as other aromatic herbs and spices native to the Peruvian region, and mixing with vinegar to create a marinade, the peasants were able to tenderize the tough meats they were given, and thus Anticucho was born. It was often skewered on sugar cane stalks or sticks of wood (similar to shish kebob) and roasted with vegetables over an open fire or coals, thus caramelizing the meat and producing a uniquely delicious, smoky flavor. Modern versions of Anticucho are often made with all types of meat, but the most authentic of them are still prepared in the old traditional Peruvian way featuring beef hearts.
Today, Peruvian food is honored all over the world, and is considered among the best of all international cuisines. In 2019, the World Travel Awards designated Peru as the “World’s Leading Culinary Destination,” for the eighth year in a row! It is no wonder why Peruvian food is so widely celebrated; indeed, modern Peru itself is a result of disparate cultures colliding in a single region, featuring recipes from a conquered people who had to learn how to make the best of the ingredients they had available to them, while also mixing in new flavors introduced to them by the sudden influx of colonizers from the Old World.