6 recipes
A cuisine as vast as the country itself, combining Indigenous cassava, Portuguese heritage and strong African roots with the flavours of later immigrants.
Read its storyBrazil's national dish: black beans simmered for hours with assorted meats until thick, served with rice, farofa and orange slices.
Small, gluten-free Brazilian cheese puffs made with tapioca starch: crisp outside, chewy and stretchy inside.
Bahia's fragrant, colorful fish stew: lime-marinated fish layered with peppers, tomatoes and coconut milk and gently simmered.
Brazil's party staple: sweetened condensed milk, cocoa and butter cooked into a fudge, rolled into balls and coated in chocolate sprinkles.
Brazil's favorite snack: a dough cooked in chicken stock, filled with shredded chicken and cream cheese, shaped into teardrops and fried.
A Brazilian table essential: cassava flour toasted with butter and onion until golden and sandy-crisp, sprinkled over almost any meal.
When the Portuguese arrived in 1500, the cooking of the Indigenous peoples of Brazil was built on cassava (manioc). This starchy root was processed to remove its toxic juices and turned into flour (farinha) and starch (polvilho, tapioca). Farofa, tapioca crêpes and the cheese bread pão de queijo, staples today, all descend from that ancient knowledge. Açaí, guaraná and the river fish of the Amazon are further gifts of Indigenous cuisine.
The Portuguese brought sugar cane, cattle, rice and salt cod (bacalhau). Enslaved Africans forced to work the sugar plantations shaped the cuisine profoundly, especially in Bahia: dendê palm oil, coconut milk, okra and acarajé, fritters made from black-eyed pea batter, are part of that legacy. Italian, German, Lebanese-Syrian and Japanese immigrants who arrived in the 19th and 20th centuries left their mark too; in São Paulo, esfiha and kibe are as popular as pizza and pasta. Feijoada, often called the national dish, is commonly said to have been created by enslaved people from discarded cuts, but historians treat this story with caution, and some trace it to Portuguese meat-and-bean stews.
In the north, Amazonian cooking stands apart with tucupi, a sauce made from cassava juice, river fish and tropical fruit. The northeast is famous for Bahia's palm-oil moqueca and for sun-dried beef (carne de sol). In the southeast, Minas Gerais is known for cheese bread and feijão tropeiro, a bean and cassava-flour dish, while Rio de Janeiro is known for its Saturday feijoada. The central-west offers the fish of the Pantanal, and the south is the land of the gaúchos, their fire-roasted churrasco and mate tea (chimarrão).
The everyday Brazilian plate is built on rice and beans (arroz e feijão), usually with farofa and salad alongside. Cassava flour, palm oil, coconut milk, lime, coriander and spring onions are common ingredients. For churrasco, meat is seasoned with coarse salt and cooked slowly on skewers over charcoal. Traditional feijoada uses various pork cuts; at home, beef short ribs, smoked beef and beef sausage make a delicious pork-free version.
The most fun first step is pão de queijo: gluten-free, crisp-edged cheese puffs made with tapioca starch, eggs and cheese. For dessert, brigadeiro, made with condensed milk and cocoa, is almost foolproof. For a main course, a coconut-milk fish stew, moqueca, served with farofa, is the easiest way to discover Brazil's tropical side.