There are three ways you can enjoy churrasco.
The first is to travel to Brazil, find a churrascaria, or join in on a beach party where someone has a barbecue pit up and running. Churrasco isn’t our national dish, but it’s close, and we love a good cut of beef with that touch of flame anywhere we can get it.
The second is to stop into your nearest Texas de Brazil location and let us bring Brazil to you. Since hopping on a flight just to have a succulent steak is a bit of a tall order, we’ve done what we can to establish our restaurants all across the United States (and in some other places around the world) so you can have our favorite Brazilian meal a lot closer to home.
The third option is to make it yourself. Churrasco has a lot in common with grilling and barbecue here in the states, but it’s unique enough that you’ll want to do a little legwork and get everything prepared before you dive right in. Once you’re ready, though, a new world of culinary joy is ready to be discovered.
How can you get Brazilian-quality churrasco while making it yourself? It’s both harder and easier than you might expect, so let’s go through the process.
Table of Contents
Understand the Churrasco Process and Intended Result
What makes churrasco unique and different from American grilling and barbecue? There are a few key differences that, as you might expect, are very meaningful.
Churrasco is light on seasonings.
One of the keys to good churrasco is the meat itself. In Brazil, when we have barbecue, we want the meat to take center stage.
Different cuts of beef and different kinds of meats all have their own distinctive flavors and textures. Churrasco as a cooking method allows those different flavors and textures to come through, without hiding them behind a barbecue sauce or a spice rub.
Churrasco is all about variety.
Another key to churrasco is that it celebrates variety in the meats on offer. Most of the time, churrasco is something you make for a party or gathering, so you get a handful of different cuts and meats, cook them, and divvy them up so that everyone can try a little of everything. You don’t settle in to eat just one dish!
Depending on how and why you’re making churrasco, this can be a tall order; after all, even if your cuts are small, you probably don’t want to cook four different steaks for dinner, necessarily. But we think it’s best with friends and family, and with variety, so if you can swing it, give it a try.
Churrasco cooks meat over an open flame.
The biggest key to churrasco is the cooking method. We’ll get into this in more detail in the following sections, but to put it in summary: churrasco is meat skewered, seasoned, and cooked over an open flame. There’s no grille, no pan, nothing contacting the meat but the skewer in the middle. It’s a somewhat unique cooking method you don’t see all that often in America; the closest you come is something like rotisserie. The end result is, of course, spectacular and well worth the effort to set up.
Now that you have an overview of the basics, let’s talk about each element and what you need to do it right.
What about sides? Drinks? Desserts?
Churrasco is all about the meat, but a good dinner has more to it than just some flame-grilled steak. From here, though, it’s all up to you. You can go for the traditional Brazilian sides and make up a batch of feijoada, some farofa, some pastels, or some coxinhas, whatever sounds good to you. Or, you can go with more traditionally American side dishes; your veg, your fries, whatever your guests desire.
Drinks, too, can be whatever you like. Brazilian favorites range from wine to tropical cocktails to bold fruit juices. Or, you can stock your favorite American beers, soft drinks, and other beverages.
Desserts are also a key part of a great party. Brazilian favorites can include a passionfruit mousse, a decadent flan, or simple chocolate Brigadeiros. American classics can be just about anything! Or you might all be too stuffed from your meats and sides to have anything else.
We have plenty of resources in our blog to help you pair wines, serve up Brazilian cocktails, or pick the perfect sides. And, of course, you can browse our menu for ideas.
Select Your Tools for Churrasco
You only need two tools for churrasco: a high heat source and a set of skewers. Since we’ll talk more about the heat in a later section, let’s focus on the skewers.
Skewers are important to the churrasco process because they give you a ton of control over each individual cut of meat. Is the heat dying down? Lower the skewers. Is one cut cooking slower than another? Lower it. Want to cook each side evenly? Rotate the skewers right there on the heat. Everything you do is easy to adjust between the height and position of the skewers, and a few interactions with the heat itself.
Skewers also facilitate the rodizio style of serving churrasco. Rodizio is where a single cut on a skewer is shown around, and each person who wants some can have a slice or two. If necessary, like the cut is thick, it’s put back on the fire to continue cooking.
The kind of skewer you use depends on the heat source you’re using. A firebox, for example, is fairly wide, so you’ll need a 28″ or longer skewer if you want to be able to set it down to cook. Smaller egg-shaped grills can make do with smaller skewers; a wider fire pit might need an even longer skewer, or a rack to hold them.
Beyond that, the specific skewer you use doesn’t hugely matter. You want something metal, with a wooden handle so you don’t burn yourself trying to handle it, and long enough to suit your heat source. Otherwise, it’s up to you. If you want to know more, we have a whole post on churrasco skewers right here for you.
Pick the Right Meat for Your Churrasco
The star of any churrasco meal is the meat. Beef is usually the go-to, but you can cook any meat you like churrasco-style, though you’ll have a harder time with something like a burger. So stock up on the beef, but if you want variety, consider:
- Brazilian sausage.
- Parmesan-crusted chicken drumettes.
- BBQed pork ribs.
- Leg of lamb.
- Pork loin.
And yes, we said BBQ ribs and parmesan-crusted chicken. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that next.
Beef is where the biggest variety comes from with churrasco. You can get whatever cuts of beef you like! Even some of the less “desirable” cuts of beef can still work well with churrasco cooking.
So, pick up some flank steak, pick up a couple of filet mignons, and pick up some sirloin. They’re all great options.
The #1 cut you want for authentic churrasco, though, is picanha. Picanha is a cut we love in Brazil, but it isn’t as readily available elsewhere. You can find it in some places around the states under the name “rump cap” or “sirloin cap”, and if you can’t find it pre-cut, you might be able to ask your local butcher to cut it special for you.
Picanha is unique because it’s a very lean chunk of meat with a thick fat cap on one side. When cooked churrasco-style, the fat renders out and soaks through the lean meat, giving it a rich flavor without the fatty texture.
If you can’t find picanha locally, or you want to order Brazilian sausage, or a handful of different meats, you can make an order from our butcher shop. We know you’ll enjoy the cuts, since they’re the same ones thousands of people have enjoyed in our restaurants.
Gather Your Seasoning for Churrasco
Another key element of churrasco is the seasoning. Or, in a lot of cases, the lack of seasoning.
So, here’s the thing: you can cook your meat however you like. In Brazil, we generally prefer to keep the seasoning minimal for two reasons. One is because we just love the taste of the meat, and hiding it with seasonings is a shame. The other is that we have a lot of very flavorful sides, from farofa to feijoada, so a more neutral-flavored meat can go well with those more flavorful sides.
The number one most essential item you need, though, is a coarse salt. True churrasco salt – sal grosso, or big salt – is larger in grain than even kosher salt. Some of it dissolves while the cooking process happens, and some of it is scraped off when the meat is ready to serve, so no one is biting into a big old rock of salt.
It’s not too difficult to get ahold of this extra-coarse salt, but if you can’t find it locally and don’t want to buy it online, you can just use kosher salt if you prefer. The coarser the salt, the better, but salt is salt is salt; it doesn’t hugely affect the flavor that much as long as you salt appropriately.
Now, we did say that the main kind of churrasco is salted meat, but that’s not the only kind of churrasco. Even at Texas de Brazil, we have BBQ ribs, spicy picanha with a special spicy rub, parmesan-crusted and bacon-wrapped cuts, and more. These spices help add some variety and cater to American tastes when a more “traditional” (to America) barbecue is intended.
You can read more about our spicy rub and other Brazilian spice profiles you can consider in our guide here. And, if you want, we even sell our spicy rub in our market.
Get Your Heat Together for Great Churrasco
We’ve already talked about the heat a little bit, but it’s worth going over on its own.
Churrasco requires a fairly high heat. The best option is an open fire pit of some kind. Traditional churrasco was cooked over campfires! It’s not something you’re doing in the oven at home or over a traditional grill. Instead, you want a firebox, an egg-shaped kettle grill like a Big Green Egg or a Joetisserie, or a larger fire pit. The specific heat source doesn’t matter, as long as it can actually get hot enough.
What about fuel? Well, propane can work, but it’s often harder to get the robust flavors you want out of your churrasco with propane. Charcoal is a readily available option and gives you more consistent, controllable heat.
The most flavorful option is wood. Different kinds of wood – mesquite, oak, hickory, and so on – can impart different flavors via the smoke as they burn. You won’t end up with truly smoked meats (the temperature is too high for that), but you’ll still get some flavor.
Whatever your choice, you need to be able to control the fire as you cook. You need to keep it hot; if you’re worried about the meat over-cooking, raise the skewers, don’t lower the heat.
Gather Your Friends for a Great Churrasco Dinner
There’s one more key to having a great time with churrasco, and it’s gathering your friends and family. It’s a meal meant to be shared! That’s why the rodizio style was invented, and it’s why it persists as a tradition today. It brings everyone closer together with a shared experience.
So, whether you want to host a Brazilian steak night, or if you want to go all-in with a backyard party, we’ve done what we can to set you up for success. Now it’s all up to you.
If you have a truly dire experience, we’re always available to cater your gatherings or host an event in our restaurants instead. Getting churrasco just right can be tricky, so why not let our gauchos do it for you? Then you can focus on what really matters: the friends, the family, and the food.