If you’ve been invited to a Brazilian barbecue restaurant or steakhouse, you might be wondering what to expect. Or, maybe you’ve made some assumptions, and you’ve been surprised when they don’t seem to bear out. The truth is, despite being called BBQ, the Brazilian form of barbecue is very different from what we’re used to here in America. Let’s talk about those differences and what you can enjoy about the unique food and culture of Brazilian churrasco.
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Brazilian BBQ is Called Churrasco
First up is a change in terminology. In Brazil, barbecue is called churrasco. The word is, essentially, just the word for barbecue, but it’s useful to use churrasco in our discussions because of the differences between Brazilian churrasco and American barbecue.
After all, when you mention BBQ in America, what do you picture? Saucy, slow-cooked, smokey, messy meats, on bread or on a plate, tender and juicy? Whatever you imagine, it’s not quite the same as what we have in Brazil; the Brazilian churrasco is different, and calling them by the same name can get confusing.
So, for the purposes of this article, we’ll refer to Brazilian barbecue as churrasco and American as barbecue or BBQ. While the difference is largely semantic, it helps keep clear what we’re talking about at any given time.
Brazilian Churrasco Loves the Picanha
One of the biggest differences between churrasco and BBQ is the cuts of meat on offer. It’s also not just about beef, but lamb, chicken, and other meats on offer as well.
American BBQ is often centered around brisket, pork shoulder, beef ribs, and similar cuts. You can get grilled meats of all sorts – including simple steaks, of course – but a lot of BBQ is centered around making a cut easier or tastier to eat. Ribs have relatively little meat for how much work it is to get, so if it isn’t cooked BBQ style, it’s difficult to use at all. Brisket tends to be tougher meat if it isn’t cooked low and slow, which is the way BBQ meats are often cooked.
Other meats, like steak, prime rib, filet mignon, and so on, are usually grilled. While that’s adjacent to BBQ, it’s not quite the same thing. And, of course, American BBQ can also include a variety of ground meats, from sausages to hamburgers and more.
Churrasco is a little different. Most of churrasco is about taking tasty cuts of meat and cooking them over open fire until they’re tender and delicious. While some of the cuts are the same – we frequently do churrasco-style filets, ribs, flank steak, and sirloin – some are unique.
Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of this than the picanha. Picanha is the national favorite cut of beef in Brazil, a small cut usually overlooked from the rump. The main portion of meat is quite lean, and it has a cap of fat, making it unbalanced if you cook it over a grill. But, the churrasco method perfectly melts the fat to flavor the rest of the cut, creating a delicacy you can’t get anywhere else.
Brazilian Churrasco Doesn’t Use Sauce or Spices
Perhaps the single biggest difference between churrasco and BBQ is the flavoring.
American BBQ is almost always flavored with some kind of sauce or spice rub. Spice rubs mix with moisture from the meat as it cooks and turn into a kind of sauce, and sauces, of course, bring moisture and flavor themselves. Americans take their sauces extremely seriously, so much so that there are restaurants with unique sauces that guard their recipes so closely that they make employees sign NDAs. People get into fights over perceived espionage. It’s a wild world.
Churrasco is very, very different. Most churrasco – not all of it, but most of it – doesn’t have a sauce or a spice rub. In fact, most of the time, the only flavoring added to the meat is salt. The meat is crusted with rock salt while it’s cooked, and the salt is knocked off before it’s served. That way, 100% of the flavor of the finished product is the meat itself.
Sometimes churrasco can be served with a green sauce or spiced in some way (like our spicy picanha), but it doesn’t need to be; we love the taste of the meat itself, and the sauces just get in the way. There’s a reason why many people call churrasco the carnivore’s paradise.
Brazilian Churrasco Cooks the Meat on Spits
Another of the differences between BBQ and churrasco is how the meat is cooked. American BBQ is generally cooked on a grill rack or even on a baking sheet or other dish that helps contain it as the collagen breaks down and the meat gets tender enough to fall apart. Having direct contact with a hot piece of metal can leave grill marks, which can be richly flavorful as a source of the Maillard reaction, but they can also be unpleasantly burned on occasion.
Churrasco, instead, is typically cooked on spits. Spits are long metal skewers that allow the gaucho in charge of cooking the meat to position it, rotate it, move it around, and ensure the whole thing cooks evenly. They can also be used as a serving device and frequently are, especially in churrascarias like Texas de Brazil. However, we’ll get more into that in a moment.
There’s a bit of crossover here. Churrasco can be used to cook things like burgers, and those tend to go over a grill more directly because you can’t really expect a delectable burger to hold together on a skewer. In these cases, either a specialized cage on a skewer is used or just a grill plate. It’s not as though Brazilians don’t use grills, of course; we just love the churrasco method more.
Brazilian Churrasco is Cooked Higher Over Heat
One thing that surprises a lot of people when they see churrasco in action for the first time is just how high the meat is held over the heat. To be clear, we don’t mean high heat; it’s as hot as any other grill source, of course. What we mean is physical elevation above the heat.
A lot of American BBQ ends up focused around a low-and-slow cooking method, where the heat is carefully balanced for the meat that is only a few inches above the coals, wood chips, or other fuel used to keep the heat going. In the case of gas grills, the flame is usually turned relatively low to manage the heat. In other cases, the coals or wood chips are banked low to keep the heat as steady as possible.
With Brazilian churrasco, the heat is often higher, and rather than try to keep the meat down close and manage the flame, we just hold the meat higher up. If it needs higher heat, lower it; if it needs less heat, raise it. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it’s a constant juggling act that can be impressive to see in action.
Brazilian Churrasco is Often Served Rodizio Style
We’ve already mentioned this a bit above, but now it’s time to talk in greater detail about it.
In American BBQ, it functions pretty much just like any other restaurant or meal you’re used to. You make your order, your order is cooked up for you or pulled off a grill out of whatever larger meal is being cooked, it’s prepared, and it’s served to you. You eat, you enjoy, and you leave, or you retire to a lawn chair to relax and socialize, in the case of a backyard barbecue.
There’s nothing wrong with this method. The downside, though, is that you only really get one meal, or you have to order more if you want something else and wait again for it to be cooked and prepared. It’s less social, slower, and often less interesting unless you’re in a “fast food” environment where the food is pre-prepared and ready to go.
With churrasco, we often serve it in the Rodizio style. Rodizio means on rotation, and it’s a constant flow of micro-meals. Gauchos cook their skewers and then carry them out through a dining room, where anyone interested in a few bites can flag them down and get a cut carved off the spit.
With this method, you have a constant flow of potential food and can get bits and bites of whatever you want. Want a break? You don’t have to take more of whatever rolls on through. Moreover, you can have a little bit of a lot of different cuts and preparations, so you get to explore different flavors and types of meat to your satisfaction. It’s an incredible experience, and we highly recommend you come check it out!
American BBQ is Generally Fattier
Another difference between American and Brazilian barbecue preparations is that American versions tend to be fattier. They may, by association, be a little less healthy, though when you’re eating your fill of red meat, there’s only so much that a difference in cut and fat content is going to make.
With American BBQ, the cuts are often fattier and more marbled. This is because the goal is to render that fat down and saturate the meat, helping it fall apart with tender, juicy, succulent flavors. The sauces are also often made using spices held in suspension with oils, butter, or other fats. It’s delicious, but it’s certainly not exactly a healthy food.
Churrasco, since it doesn’t have a sauce in general, is quite different. Some of the cuts we use are also less fatty than American cuts, so they tend to be a little healthier. A lot of this depends on the source of the meat, though, and you can certainly get meat from a lean cow in an American barbecue and a fattier cow for churrasco. Either one works.
American BBQ is Frequently Smoked
One final difference worth listing here is that American barbecue is often smoked in addition to, or as part of, the BBQ process. In fact, many American barbecue artisans have a careful selection of wood chips they use, from woods like hickory, cherry, oak, and more, which can lend specific kinds of flavors to the meat when their smoke is used. Often, spice blends are made specifically to complement and go alongside the flavors of the smoke.
Churrasco has a little bit of smoke inherent in the charcoal used to cook our meat, but there’s no enclosure to keep the smoke in and circulating. Smoking isn’t the point, and the heat of the flame is more important than the flavor of the fuel.
How to Get the Most Out of Churrasco
If you’re interested in experiencing churrasco, you’ve come to the right place. Here at Texas de Brazil, we’ve specialized in bringing the churrasco menu and the rodizio experience to American audiences. Our fusion steakhouse brings both saucy American meats and salt-roasted Brazilian cuts to an American audience. We cook in the classic churrasco style, with trained gauchos (the Brazilian cowboy) doing the cooking and the serving. From picanha to filet mignon, from parmesan-crusted wings to spicy sausage, we have a little bit of everything for anyone who wants to give it a try.
All you have to do is find your nearest Texas de Brazil location and swing by. While we encourage reservations, they aren’t necessary to have a good time. If you want to read about the etiquette and how it all works, we have a guide for that here.
Once you’ve experienced our rodizio-style churrasco and have enjoyed a fine meal or two with friends and family, we’re sure you’re going to want to come back. To that end, why not join our eClub? When you sign up – and it’s totally free – you’re eligible to receive special promotions and coupons to make your next experience even better.
We’re sure you’ll love it, so stop by your nearest Texas de Brazil and let us show you what it means to be treated to Brazilian hospitality.
