Several decades ago, Mexican vendors knocked on the doors of houses to offer a peculiar kitchen utensil called fugitive, a four-piece grill that is installed over the stove fire, in which any roasted carnitas can be assembled in the kitchen.
Via Tik Tok, Emma Fernández (@michoacanitafeliz) has shared various recipes and culinary experiences, one of them is precisely the anecdote of how she got her fugitive, at the request of a follower, who saw her using it in a preparation of papered nopales: “I thought they no longer existed , I loved using it and I have not found it again, ”he wrote.
According to Emilia, in the 1980s a vendor from Oaxaca offered it to her mother for 50 pesos and it became a common instrument in her recipes; when she grew up she tried to get one, but they weren’t common anymore, until she got it two years ago: a piece that had been thrown away in a stall selling comales and tortillas.
“Mexicans are very intelligent when it comes to making inventions, this is a cool thing with dark corn,” says Emilia after having roasted steak, nopales, chiles for a sauce and even a couple of tortillas on her fugitive.
How does the fugitive work?
This grill has the shape of a large saucepan with a hole in the middle, which is placed directly on the stove grill, there a two-piece support with a disc (grid) is adapted so that the fire does not go directly to food, place the grill on top and you are ready to start cooking.
According Larousse Kitchen, it works for radiation Y convection: “the fire heats the hot air particles which makes them move, driving the disk, which distributes, with its turns, the heat to the food on the grid”.
It is more practical than a conventional grill that requires more space; however, the characteristic flavor of the charcoal impregnated in the meat juices is also omitted, although the cooking is achieved to perfection.
It could be called “fugitive” because the cooking flame indirectly, that is, without being seen; another option could be because of the rapid speed at which the disk rotates in the heat of the fire.
This invention aroused the interest of users, the video has almost 11 million views and 2.2 million views. likes.
For many people it has been a taste of flavors of yesteryear, there are those who remember that their great-grandmothers or grandmothers used it, others commented that in Argentina there is a similar one called parigas (gas grill) or in Venezuela they are called rotary and they use it to heat arepas.
Where to buy a fugitive?
Today they are still for sale, they can be found on Amazon, but they no longer cost “50 pesos”, their price ranges from 400 to 600 pesos.
Larousse Cocina details what they offer in Jalisco, Nuevo León and in other specialty stores.
Users reported that they also sell it in Morelia, Michoacán; They also offer it through a Facebook page called Asadores La Abuela, which highlights that it is an easy-to-use instrument that avoids the use of charcoal and is the only one in the world with a “madisco.”
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