This post is part of the Team Challenge between Connect Live 2019 Attendees, proposed by @ermest. Each member charged to write about a theme, but everyone contributed. In this post I describe the diversity of our country. This is one of the #teambrazil posts from this challenge, and you can find our main post here.
As a Local Guide, I love to rate restaurants, bars, street foods, etc. As a traveler, I had the opportunity to eat different kinds of foods in several states of Brazil. However, Brazil looks like an immense continent. We are more than 200 million people and have a diversified culture and cuisine. So, this text is the way I see this magnificent, simple, sophisticated, unique and all other adjectives in both English and Portuguese that fail to accurately describe what Brazilian food looks like.
Rice and Beans
Although Brazil has, indeed, a very diversified cuisine, there are two ingredients that bring us all together: “rice and beans”. Brazilians (myself included) are used to eating rice and beans every day. They are two nutritive, tasty and abundant ingredients. And believe me, it’s not only about mixing these two ingredients together but how they are prepared. If you come o Brazil, forget about expensive restaurants and look for a simple to order a “PF” (Prato Feito, which is something like a set meal, with both of these ingredients plus a salad and either meat, chicken or fish. Or even better, get invited by a Brazilian to eat authentic home cooking).Feijoada – Our National Dish
You already know that we love beans. So, if rice and bean is our most common dish, our national dish that would, of course, include beans (also served with rice, by the way). It is Feijoada (a word derivate of the Portuguese word for beans, which is “feijão”). With some variations, you can probably find Feijoada in almost everywhere in Brazil. Feijoada is a mixture of beans and pork, with beef (usually dried meat), served with rice, seasoned manioc flour, and cabbage. I have recently written a post about Feijoada, so you can check out more details here. Spoilers: Portuguese brought to Brazil a version of the French “Cassoulet” and Brazilians (especially African descendants) improve upon it and popularized it.
Mandioca, Aipim or Macaxeira
If Feijoada has both a Portuguese and African heritage, from the Indigenous people we received the “Manioc”, or Mandioca in Portuguese. Actually, we eat this root all around Brazil, but it has a different name in each region. In the South, Middle East and Southwest parts of Brazil (where I live), besides mandioca you’ll also find it as “aipim”. In the North and Northeast, the most common term is “macaxeira”. Anyway, you can eat manioc in different ways (fried, roasted, in soups, mashed, or as a flour). As it’s a native root from South America, it’s also very popular in other Latin American countries as “Cassava” (a Spanish word that was also borrowed by some English speaking countries).
“Carne de Sol”
What about when you love meat, but you need to find a way to conserve it without refrigeration? In Northeastern Brazil, they found a way. You may think I’m talking about “Jerked beef”, but our “Carne de Sol” (literally Sun Meat) has a unique, Brazilian flavor. It’s nothing more than a salted beef, which is exposed to the sun to get cured. It’s a traditional dish in the Northwestern, where it can also be called “Jabá”. In other parts of the country you can find “Carne de Sol”, but it’s more common you find variations of that, with different names and made from a different process (in the South it’s called “charque”, and in other parts of Brasil “Carne Seca”, which literally means “dried meat”). Charque and Carne seca are closer to “Jarked Beef”.Churrasco
It’s not only the “mandioca” that brings us together with our Latin American neighbors. We also love eating meat. If our Argentinian “Hermanos” have their “Assado”, we have our “Churrasco”. You can find Churrasco in a lot of restaurants that offer Buffet service, it in a “Churrascaria”. And, of course, we also like to bring family and friends together and make a Churrasco at home. Churrasco is a traditional dish in the South of Brazil (the region closer to Argentina and Uruguay), but its popular all throughout Brazil.Fish and Sea Food
Brazil’s coastline extends for 7.491km, and we have some of the largest rivers of the Word like the “Amazon River”. Fish is an important food in Indigenous diet, so of course, we love to eat fish and all kinds of seafood. We love, for example, to eat shrimp, be it at home, in restaurants or at the beach. I prefer to eat freshwater fish, like Tambaqui, Pirarucu, and Pintado. Recently, I’ve eaten a delicious North recipe that was: “Tambaqui Fish and Jambu, Uarini Flour, red pepper, Brazilian nuts and coriander with Tucupi sauce”. I’m sorry for not explaining what is “Jambu”, “Uarini” and “Tucupi”, but this text is already quite long, so you’ll have to come to Brazil and taste these unique ingredients yourself.
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Have you ever eaten Brazilian Food? What os those dishes would you like to try? What is your national dish? Share with us.
If you noted, Rice, Beans, Manioc and Cabbage are four ingredients very common in Brazilian Cuisine. What are the most common ingredients in your country?
P.S.: Have you ever heard about Coxinha and Pastel? I’m working in an additional text “Brazilian Street Foods and “Deserts”.
EDIT: Part 2 of this text is out. Please check here.