In Brazil, barbecue is a wonderful tradition of socialization, sharing, and great food. Up here in America, there are similar traditions, usually centered around a grill and a game, as the meats are cooked, the spread is laid out, and the TVs start to play whatever football, basketball, or other game is on that day.
What about having Brazilian barbecue up north? While we’ve tried to bring the tradition and the food to the US through our Texas de Brazil restaurants, there’s only so much we can do to infuse an entirely different culinary culture into American society.
There’s good news: if you want to host your own backyard barbecue and do so Brazil-style, it’s a lot easier than you might expect. And, if you can’t find all the ingredients you want or you’re having trouble with the timing, we can help. You don’t have to move your party to our restaurants, either; we’ll bring it to you with our catering service.
If you want to do it yourself, though, let’s talk about the things you’ll need along the way.
Table of Contents
Brazilian Backyard Barbecue: The Grill
If you know much about Brazilian BBQ, also known as churrasco, you know that we like to keep things simple. The core elements are the meat and the heat, so let’s start with the heat. Where do you get that heat from, and what do you need to properly grill Brazilian meats?
If you go all the way back in the history of Brazilian BBQ, you come to the open plains, where cattle drivers (our gauchos or cowboys) brought herds across the grasslands. Since things like grilling equipment are large, heavy, and difficult to transport, the gauchos of the time started their own traditions.
Back then, cooking meat was done over an open fire pit, usually just a cleared area surrounded by rocks. The meat was placed on skewers and held over the flame, with little more than salt as a seasoning. After all, these gauchos traveled light! It’s a lot easier to transport a bag of salt and some skewers than it is a complicated cooking setup.
This style of barbecue isn’t exactly unique to Brazil – cooking meat on sticks over an open flame is one of the easiest ways to do it – but we’ve refined it into an art. Where other cultures developed more elaborate grilling setups or started to incorporate spice rubs or alternatives for preserving meat, we’ve kept it simple.
Even today, the modern churrasco experience, like what you find at Texas de Brazil, comes from these roots. We don’t have an open fire pit in the ground, but our kitchen is centered around a large open-flame grill where racks hold skewers of meat.
So, if you want to pull off your own backyard churrasco, what do you need? Well, there are three main options.
Option 1: A fire pit. The most traditional way to hold a churrasco in your backyard is to have a fire pit. They’re fairly easy to build; you just need to clear some ground, build an enclosure, and make sure you have a place for fuel and a place to hold your skewers. You can buy kits or just DIY something.
The keys to a good backyard fire pit are safety (of course) and the proper design to let the fire get nice and hot. Churrasco is not a “low and slow” means of cooking meat. When you get right down to it, though, remember that gauchos did this on the open plains with whatever rocks and fuel they had on hand. You don’t need to be that picky!
Option 2: A kamado-style grill. We understand that not everyone has the ability to set up a fire pit, either because they don’t want to mess up their landscaping or because there are HOAs or other local laws that forbid it.
If that’s the case, another option you have is something like a kamado grill. There are a bunch of different brands that sell these iconic egg-shaped grills, like Kamado Joe, the Big Green Egg, and the Dragon Kamado.
Kamado grills have the significant benefit of being able to get very, very hot, which is what you need for the most authentic kind of churrasco.
On the other hand, they can be pretty expensive, and they’re quite small, so you can’t cook a bunch of skewers all at once. They also don’t give you much flexibility on positioning or temperature, so if you have different cuts or different sides you want to cook at different temperatures, it can be somewhere between tricky and impossible.
If you want to know more, we wrote a whole guide to using kamado grills for churrasco over here.
Option 3: Any grill you like. More traditional kettle grills are usable for churrasco if you’re willing to work for it. It’s harder to get them hot enough for the most authentic experience, but you can still get something that’s close; if the flavors are what you’re looking for, rather than the full experience, it’s often good enough.
And really, we’d prefer to have more people enjoying a good slice of picanha than not, so don’t let your equipment hold you back.
Pro tip: get yourself a nice set of meat skewers for your backyard churrasco. They’re relatively inexpensive as far as grill equipment is concerned, they’re flexible and can be used with all sorts of things later, and they’ll last a lifetime.
Brazilian Backyard Barbecue: The Meats
For many people, the cooking method is secondary to the meats themselves. In fact, in many ways, churrasco is a celebration of the variety and flavor inherent in meat, and not the spices or other infusions that so many other BBQ cultures revolved around. Here in Brazil, we love to experience the different flavors and textures that different cuts of meat can bring to the table.
What meats should you pick up for your backyard Brazilian barbecue?
#1: Picanha. Picanha is a cut of meat that is surprisingly difficult to find in American butcher shops and grocery stores because it’s not usually a cut that works well prepared in traditional American cooking methods.
Why? It’s a very lean piece of meat with a fat cap. When cooked in a skillet or on a traditional grill, the two components stay separate; the fat ends up being, well, a big chunk of fat that can be unpleasant for some people to eat. Meanwhile, the meat stays lean and doesn’t have as much flavor or tenderness to it.
When cooked over an open flame on a skewer, though, the whole paradigm changes. The fat renders out and, rather than dripping away like it would on a grill, suffuses the lean meat. You get all of the flavor and richness of the fat in the meat without having to find more richly marbled meat to start.
There’s a reason why picanha is considered Brazil’s favorite cut of meat, after all.
Fortunately, picanha is slowly growing more popular and is showing up more and more in different places around the country. Costco has started to carry it, as have some other stores, and you can often talk to a butcher directly if you have one locally who will make specialized cuts for you. The US name is often sirloin cap or rump cap.
Other cuts of beef you can make sure to bring to your backyard churrasco include:
- Filet mignon, the ever-expensive, ever-popular cut considered the king of cuts by many. It’s rich, it’s flavorful, but it’s a tall order to bring to a gathering of friends for any but the most important celebrations.
- Petit filet. Also known as the chuck primal, this is a somewhat rare cut to find, just like picanha. It’s no less delicious, but it’s usually cheaper if you can find it.
- Flank steak. Often considered one of the less glamorous cuts, this cut works very well for the churrasco method of cooking over an open flame and is common in churrascarias for that reason. It’s used in both fraldinha and maminha in Brazil.
While you’re at it, you can bring other meats to the grill as well. We love our beef, but we’re also happy to have other meats, too. Consider:
- Pork ribs, which can be marinated and sauced up the way you would love to have them locally.
- Chicken drumettes, those small and delectable bits of chicken crusted with parmesan or other spices.
- Brazilian sausage, which can be enjoyed on its own or as part of a side dish we’ll talk about later on.
- Lamb, in both leg-of-lamb and lamb chop forms, which can bring a whole new dimension of flavor to your backyard barbecue.
If you’re looking for ideas, why not check out our menu?
Brazilian Backyard Barbecue: The Sides
No meal in Brazil is complete without at least a plate of rice and beans, but there’s also a lot more to a great party meal than just the meat and the rice.
Farofa, for example, is an incredible addition and brings an authentic flair to your backyard barbecue. The toasted tapioca starch adds crunch and a smoky flavor to anything you put it on and serves as a perfect flavor enhancer for many other elements.
Another classic is feijoada. It’s not something you’ll make over the grill, typically, but the rich and hearty stew (made of black beans, smoked pork, and a handful of other ingredients) is a staple of nearly every meal in Brazil, just like farofa.
For other side dish ideas, you can browse both our menu and guides like this one. There are plenty of options, but remember that at a barbecue, the star of the show is going to be the meat.
Common Questions for Brazilian BBQ
Since people tend to have a lot of questions about food cultures they aren’t part of, we wanted to answer some of them here.
Do you need a specific spice rub?
Most of the time, no, you don’t need a spice rub or even any spices at all. Brazilian barbecue is unique in that most of the time, all we do is crust the meat with coarse salt and cook it over high-heat flames. This accentuates the flavor of the meat rather than hiding it behind herbs and spices.
That said, not everything we cook is salt-only. You can try our spicy rub, or you can mix up a spice mix you prefer. It really depends on how authentic you want to make your experience.
Do you need to adopt the Rodizio style?
These days, churrasco is almost synonymous with rodizio, but that wasn’t always the case.
If you’re not sure what we mean, rodizio is the serving style used in modern churrascarias, including places like Texas de Brazil. It’s the method where the gaucho (or in your backyard, you as pitmaster) takes a skewer and brings it around to cut slices for guests who are interested in that cut before returning it to the fire as necessary to continue cooking the now-exposed parts of the meat.
It’s entirely possible to have churrasco without needing to manage a rodizio style of serving. We like it because it brings more of our culture to our restaurants, but in your yard, you make the rules. If you want to do it, go for it! If not, just let people make orders of whatever they want or give everyone a selection. It’s all your choice.
Where can you get the best meats for a Brazilian BBQ?
The best option is a local butcher shop if you have one. But, since not everyone lives in cattle country or has a butcher locally that can cut what they want, you can also make orders from places like our shop. We offer both individual cuts and whole grill packages suitable for parties, full of all the best cuts.
And, if all else fails, feel free to contact us for catering or to host an event! We just want to bring Brazil’s culinary traditions to a new global audience, so we’re happy with whatever option you choose.
