Brazil is a huge country with individual states that are the size of other countries. As such, the food culture throughout Brazil can be wildly different depending on where you are. Brazil’s northeastern region, Bahia, is known for its spicy cuisine; by contrast, other regions dial back on the spices (and seasonings), and the southern regions tend to opt for salt and little else.
If you’re one of the more spice-averse people, you might initially be skeptical about any Central or South American cuisine, with the spicy reputation of foods from Mexico, Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago, or Suriname making even seasoned spice veterans wince. We’re here to assure you that most Brazilian food isn’t spicy, and if it is, you’ll know well in advance. You almost have to seek it out, depending on where you are!
If you want to know more about the spicy foods you might find in Brazil, you can read our guide to Brazilian foods for spice lovers here. If you’re looking for something without capsaicin, keep on reading here!
Table of Contents
Option 1: Bolo de Fuba
First up on the list is one of Brazil’s favorite breakfast foods. You may have heard before that Brazilians love their sweets, and that extends to breakfast as much as it does to dessert. Here in America, a breakfast might be sweet, like pancakes or French toast, but it’s also just as likely to be eggs and bacon or another savory, salty meal.
In Brazil, while you can get a more savory breakfast meal, you’re more likely to find something sweet on the menu. Bolo de Fuba is one such sweet meal, and it’s a bit of a culture shock for some people because of what it is.
So, what is it? It’s cake!
Specifically, Bolo de Fuba is a cornmeal cake. It uses both cornmeal and flour, making something sort of like a cornbread you might be familiar with. Sugar in the batter and a glaze bring sweetness, the cornmeal adds a nuttiness to the cake and keeps it soft and crumbly, and the buttermilk used to moisten it brings a bit of a tang as well.
Of course, the cake itself isn’t all there is to it. The star of the show is just as much about what you put on the cake as it is the cake itself. Some people go for fresh grated coconut. Some pile on the free fruit. Some use a simple sugar syrup or powdered sugar or double up on the icing. Others use a thickened dulce de leche. A few people even opt for cheese! It’s a very flexible cake recipe, but more importantly, it’s super simple to make in the morning. The ingredients just need to be mixed up in a blender and poured into a ring pan, baked, and turned out to be sliced and enjoyed.
You’re not likely to see Bolo de Fuba on our menu for two reasons. One, it’s a breakfast food, and we’re not open for breakfast, and two, it doesn’t quite fit with the fusion of American and Brazilian food cultures we’re trying to provide. That said, if you really want us to add it to the menu – maybe as a dessert? – then feel free to reach out and ask! Anything is possible if there’s enough demand.
Option 2: Pao de Queijo
If you visit Brazil, you’ll be hard-pressed to go a day where you don’t have a Pao de Queijo or two somewhere along the way. On our menu, we call it the Brazilian Cheese Bread, and that gives you almost everything you need to know about it.
A traditional Pao (or bread) de Queijo (with cheese) is a little different from what you might find here on American tables. It’s not a traditional bread with cheese on top or mixed throughout, nor is it something like the ever-popular Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Because of the unique ingredients used to make it, it’s something unlike anything else you’ll likely have encountered before.
Picture this: a crisp but not-quite-crunchy exterior. A pillowy, soft, chewy inside, with plenty of air and a layer of cheese. A surprisingly tangy flavor and chewy texture, unlike any bread you’ve experienced before.
The secret is the flour. Pao de Queijo doesn’t use your traditional wheat flour the way most other breads you’re used to do. Instead, it uses tapioca flour, made from the cassava root, to serve the same purpose. This flour adds a sour tang to the bread, a chewy texture, and it’s gluten-free! The cheese is also not your usual sharp cheddar; instead, a traditional version of the bread uses a Brazilian cheese or the more readily available Parmesan for a nutty flavor.
Pao de Queijo is common both as a breakfast food served with deli meats and more cheeses or as a stand-alone snack served as a side for other meals. That’s where we put it: right there on our list of hot items you can enjoy in between bites of succulent meat.
Option 3: Coxinha
Coxinha is a popular street food found all throughout Brazil. They work great as a quick bite on the way to a destination, a snack to hold you over as you wander a market, or a lunch in between halves of a shift at work. They’re easy to enjoy on the go because they’re largely self-contained and don’t require utensils to enjoy.
So, what are they? They’re technically a form of croquette, a mixture of filling wrapped in dough, then battered up and fried golden and firm, usually in a teardrop or cone shape, so they’re easy to handle. Fun fact: the shape was originally meant to resemble a chicken drumstick! They can work great as a snack, but just as often, they’re heavy and filling enough to be a meal on their own.
Coxinha is also a relatively recent invention. As the story goes, in the early 1900s, a picky Brazilian prince loved chicken but would only ever eat the drumsticks. One day, having run out of drumsticks, the court chef mixed up a chicken filling, shaped dough to resemble a drumstick, and served it. The prince loved it, and ever since, it has been a staple.
A traditional Coxinha has a filling made with shredded chicken, seasonings like garlic and onion, and a dash of citrus like orange and lime to brighten it all up. Often, it’s all held together with cream cheese or a similar Brazilian cheese and further seasoned with other herbs and spices depending on the tastes of whoever is making it at the time.
The combination of a dough container and a batter-and-fry process makes for a very unique and interesting exterior. The savory chicken filling is rich and delicious and can be customized according to the tastes of the cook. In fact, as the dish grows more and more popular, many different variations are starting to crop up, including those using peas, mushrooms, cashew apples, jackfruit, or even falafel. In Minas Gerais, the dough uses corn; in Curitiba, they add cheddar.
Option 4: Farofa
Farofa is many things. It’s an ingredient. It’s a topping. It’s a meal of its own. It’s simple but extremely flexible and can be used in a thousand different ways. It’s fast to make – you can whip up a batch in ten minutes – and it’s super flavorful to go alongside anything else you’re making. It’s just about the most popular single dish in all of Brazil, and with good reason.
If you’re familiar with our blog, you know we can hardly go a post without mentioning Farofa. It’s on our menu, too, right there in the salad area, so you can use it however you like when you come to dine with us.
So, remember how we mentioned the cassava root up above? Well, that humble root is an extremely common ingredient throughout Brazil because it’s native to the region and cheap. It has found a place in pretty much every homestead, from rich to poor, from north to south, and everywhere in between.
Farofa is, quite simply, toasted cassava flour. But paring it down to just those three words definitely doesn’t do it justice. It’s the carrier of so much flavor and texture; you’ll be hooked once you try it.
The secret is in how it’s made. Farofa is traditionally made by toasting the flour in a rich fat, often bacon grease and a little butter. This fat is used to cook up onions and garlic, and then the cassava flour is added to soak up that liquid and toast. As it cooks, you stir it around, and it ends up with a texture fairly similar to bread crumbs: coarse, crumbly, and crunchy.
Some meals use Farofa as a base, adding meats and other ingredients to it to round it out. Most of the time, though, it’s used as a topping; it’s added on top of feijoada, the Brazilian black bean stew (also on our menu), or topping French fries, or even sprinkled on meat for a bit of crunch and smokey bacon flavor. Really, it’s rare that a Brazilian doesn’t have a dish of Farofa next to them while they eat, so they can add it to anything that comes their way. Next time you stop in at Texas de Brazil, give it a try yourself!
Option 5: BBQ Picanha
When you think of barbecue, you might think of a spicy, smokey BBQ sauce, possibly with some sweet elements beside. Barbecue is a fine tradition all around the world, and every culture has its own twist.
Here in Brazil, we’ve refined the art of barbecue to the extreme, but it’s very different from an American BBQ. In America, you’re mostly cooking the meat down until it’s soft and tender and mixing it with some kind of delectable sauce. Sauce culture is wild, too; people fiercely defend their recipes and hide their secret ingredients.
In Brazil, we don’t worry about any of that. In fact, not only is there no spice in Brazilian barbecue, there’s basically no seasoning either! To some Americans, this sounds like sacrilege; to others, it’s a celebration.
Why do we leave off the spices? Well, we have a fine appreciation for the meat itself. Different cuts of meat have different inherent flavors and textures due to how the fat is marbled throughout or kept alongside the cut.
The Brazilian favorite cut is something you can hardly even find in America: the Picanha. This cut is a very lean slice of meat with a thick, rich cap of fat along one side. As the meat cooks, this fat renders down and soaks through the meat, enhancing the flavor into something truly special.
As far as spices are concerned, a lot depends on where you’re having your Picanha. In the southern regions of Brazil, we very rarely do anything more than add some salt to the cooking process to enhance the flavors and build a delicious crust on the outside of the meat. In the more central regions, you may get spice mixes, like our Garlic Picanha.
Further to the north, in the regions with the most North African influence, you’ll find Spicy Picanha, where that heat is added with the use of a spicy rub. Sometimes, this uses a spice you’re familiar with, like cayenne; sometimes, it makes use of a more Brazilian spicy pepper, like Malagueta peppers.
Of course, if you’re spice-averse, you just need to avoid the spicy options on our menu; trust us, there are plenty of non-spicy meats to enjoy.
While many people tend to have some reservations about cuisine with Latin origins, since a lot of them tend to have a deep love for spicy foods, Brazilian cuisine is, by and large, not spicy. Even when you’re dining in the north, you’re just as likely to have spice-free options and a bottle of house-made hot sauce on the side. It’s a great option to experience a unique cuisine without overriding spices.
If you want to give Brazilian BBQ a try and experience these delicious options yourself, why not stop in? Find your local Texas de Brazil and stop by. We’d love to have you!
