The atlas · A cuisine · Brazil — the eastern half of South America, from the Amazon to the southern pampas

Brazilian

Also Cozinha brasileira

Black beans and rice every day, cassava in a dozen forms, fish stewed in palm oil and coconut, and meat roasted over coals on long skewers.

Where it comes from

Long before the Portuguese arrived in the sixteenth century, Indigenous peoples had worked out how to make bitter cassava safe to eat — grating it, pressing out the poisonous juice, toasting the flour — and cassava is still everywhere: as farinha, as tapioca starch, as tucupi. Açaí, cashews, peanuts and much of the fish of the Amazon come from the same knowledge.

Portugal's colony ran on sugar, gold and coffee, and on the labour of enslaved Africans; Brazil took in more enslaved people than any other country in the Americas, and was the last there to end slavery. African cooks shaped the food profoundly, above all in Bahia, where dendê palm oil, okra, black-eyed peas, dried shrimp and ginger are the base of the cooking, and many dishes are also offerings in Candomblé.

Later migrations added more: Italians and Germans in the south and São Paulo, Lebanese and Syrians with their kibbeh and esfihas, and Japanese families whose community in Brazil, centred on São Paulo, is the largest outside Japan. Brazilians have folded all of it in, while still sitting down most days to rice, beans and a little meat.

Where in it

  1. BahiaThe heart of Afro-Brazilian cooking, around Salvador: dendê, coconut and dried shrimp, and acarajé sold on the street by baianas in white.Moqueca baianaAcarajéVatapá
  2. Minas GeraisThe inland mining state, known for its farmhouse cooking over wood-fired stoves — pork, beans, greens, its own cheeses, and cheese bread.Pão de queijo
  3. Rio de JaneiroBeach snacks, botecos and long lunches — Rio's bars and restaurants serve feijoada on Wednesdays and Saturdays, a habit that spread across the country.Feijoada
  4. São PauloThe great migrant city, with Italian, Lebanese and Japanese kitchens of its own — and the snack bars, lanchonetes, where coxinhas are fried all day.Coxinha
  5. ParáAt the mouth of the Amazon, around Belém: tucupi, jambu, river fish and açaí, eaten savoury as Indigenous peoples have long done.Pato no tucupi
  6. Rio Grande do SulThe southern grasslands, cattle country of the gaúchos: churrasco over embers, and bitter chimarrão tea shared from a gourd.Churrasco

How it cooks

Refogar
Garlic and onion sizzled in fat before rice, beans or greens go in — the start of almost every everyday dish.
Working cassava
Grated, pressed, fermented, dried and toasted into flour, starch and tucupi — the Indigenous craft behind half the pantry.
Farofa
Cassava flour toasted in butter or fat until it smells nutty, to scatter over beans and meat.
Dendê and coconut
The Bahian way: palm oil and coconut milk, often in a clay pot, for fish, prawns and sauces.
Churrasco
Big cuts on long skewers over wood or charcoal embers, seasoned with nothing but coarse salt.

Always in the kitchen

black beansricefarinha de mandiocatapioca starchdendê oilcoconut milkdried shrimpmalagueta chillilimesgarliconionscoriandercarne secalinguiçarequeijãocachaça

Cook from it

Tonight, with what's good in October

Its classics

BrazilianFeijoadaBlack beans stewed slowly with salted, smoked and fresh pork and dried beef, served with rice, greens, farofa and orange.No one here has made it yetBrazilianMoqueca baianaFish, or prawns, stewed in coconut milk and dendê palm oil with tomato, peppers, onion, lime and coriander.No one here has made it yetBrazilianAcarajéBlack-eyed pea fritters fried in dendê, split open and filled with vatapá, dried shrimp, salad and hot pepper sauce.No one here has made it yetBrazilianVatapáA thick, creamy paste of bread, dried shrimp, peanuts and cashews cooked with coconut milk, dendê and ginger.No one here has made it yetBrazilianPão de queijoSmall round cheese breads made with cassava starch — crisp outside, chewy and hollow within.No one here has made it yetBrazilianCoxinhaA teardrop-shaped croquette of shredded chicken wrapped in a dough made with its own stock, breaded and fried.No one here has made it yetBrazilianBrigadeiroCondensed milk, cocoa and butter cooked into a soft fudge, rolled into balls and coated in chocolate sprinkles.No one here has made it yetBrazilianPato no tucupiRoast duck simmered in tucupi, the sour yellow broth of fermented cassava juice, with jambu leaves that make the mouth tingle.No one here has made it yetBrazilianChurrascoBeef and sausages on long skewers, roasted over embers with nothing but coarse salt and sliced straight onto the plate.No one here has made it yetBrazilianFarofaCassava flour toasted in butter or bacon fat with onion and garlic until golden and sandy, for scattering over beans and meat.No one here has made it yet

How it got here

1600s–1800s · from The Bight of Benin to Salvador da BahiaAkaraEnslaved Yoruba and other West Africans brought to Bahia carried akara, the black-eyed pea fritter, with them. In Salvador it's fried in dendê, split and filled with vatapá and shrimp, and still sold on the street by baianas in white — the name is said to join akara with the Yoruba for 'to eat'.Acarajé →
1908 · from Kobe to São PauloJapanese immigrantsThe Kasato Maru reached Santos in 1908 with the first Japanese immigrants, bound for São Paulo's coffee farms. Their descendants grew much of the state's vegetables, and São Paulo now has the largest Japanese community outside Japan.

Cooked here

No one here has cooked Brazilian yet.