If you’ve ever visited a churrascaria like Texas de Brazil, you’ve probably noticed something important: all of the meats we bring out and circulate through the dining room are carried on skewers. It’s a key part of the Churrasco and Rodizio experience, but you may have wondered about it.
- Is it a Brazilian tradition or an Americanized invention?
- Is it something we do all the time, or just for special occasions?
- Does cooking meat on skewers do anything special?
Fortunately, we’re experts in the fine field of Brazilian food, so we’ll answer all of these questions and more. If we’ve left anything out, please reach out and let us know!
So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Why Does Brazilian Food Use Skewers?
There are two answers to this question.
The first is simply tradition. We’ll get more into it in a later section, but the tradition of using skewers to barbecue meat has been common in Brazil for over 200 years. That may not be all that old in the grand scheme of things, but it’s plenty to form an enduring tradition.
The second is practicality. When we’re not making stews, rice dishes, or a home-cooked stroganoff, we’re cooking meat over the embers of wood chips burned low and hot. For most of history – until we developed things like gas stoves and electric ovens – it was a lot easier to adjust the position of food over a consistent heat than it was to adjust the temperature of the flame.
Different countries and different traditions have come up with different ways to do this, from vents and ovens to shelves to hooks, but the one we settled on in Brazil was skewers. And besides, there’s something satisfying and enjoyable about handling a metal “sword” with a bunch of tasty meat on it, making it into something delicious for a whole group of people.
Beyond that, do we really need a reason? The deeper truth is that we all have to eat, and to eat, we all have to cook. Throughout a nation as large as Brazil, there are people using pretty much every possible means of cooking food to their tastes. Skewers are just one of the many different options that we happen to like.
Does Cooking Food on Brazilian Skewers Do Anything Special?
Every method of cooking food does something different and unique, and skewers are no different.
By putting meat on skewers, you gain a ton of control over the cooking process. If it’s underdone inside but nearly done on the outside, you can raise and move it away from the heat to allow it to come up to temperature. If it’s mostly done all the way through and you want a nice smokey char on the outside, you can move it closer to the heat.
Beyond that, there are a few useful things you can do with skewers.
For one thing, you can rotate them easily. As long as the meat you’ve skewered is balanced, you won’t have to fight it trying to rotate itself. If one side seems less done than the rest, you can adjust the angle. All of this means you end up with a more evenly cooked piece of meat, especially compared to a flat grill, griddle, or pan, which can only really position meat from a couple of angles.
Skewers also allow you to put things on the outside of the meat, like spice rubs, sauces, or marinades. While you can do that with any cooking method, you’re more likely to have some stick to a pan and lose it in the cooking process.
At Texas de Brazil, most of our meats are simply salt-crusted and cooked with the natural flavors of the meat and the grill because that’s all you really need. But, some others, like our spicy picanha or our parmesan chicken, are able to retain all of their coating because of the skewer method of cooking.
Another benefit to using skewers is in the serving. If you’ve experienced our rodizio-style barbecue, you know that our gauchos come through the dining room with big skewers, but they don’t just slap a lump of steak on your plate. Instead, they cut off slices of the outer layers of the meat, which you grab with a pair of tongs and transfer to your plate to enjoy.
What happens to the rest of the meat? Since the interior isn’t tastily crusted with Maillard goodness, rather than just serving it as-is, the skewer is brought back to the grill for another round.
As you may or may not know, the bulk of the flavor of a tasty piece of meat comes not just from the meat itself but from the way the meat is chemically changed by the combination of heat and salt. The outer bits are, quite often, the tastiest bits. With the skewer method of cooking churrasco, you can ensure that the whole piece of meat is the tastiest bit, over and over.
Really, what’s not to love?
What Are Brazilian Skewers Called?
The Brazilian term for our Brazilian skewers is “espeto braziliero,” which, if you want to learn a little bit of Portuguese, means “Brazilian skewer.” Espeto can also mean “spit,” as in the alternative name for a skewer, more commonly used in rotisserie cooking.
Not very exciting, right? Well, fortunately, it doesn’t really have to be. What can be simpler than a long, thin stick that you put meat on? In fact, a skewer doesn’t even need to be made of metal (many are wooden), but ours are made of metal due to the high heat used in churrasco.
What is the History of Brazilian Skewers?
Cooking food with skewers over a fire is a very, very old method of cooking. In fact, there is evidence in an archaeological site in Germany called the Schoningen Site, which had burnt sticks that some people interpreted as primitive skewers. It’s not actually proven that was the case, but you can’t fault us for liking the idea, right?
One of the earliest confirmed examples of meats roasted over a fire on skewers or spits came from ancient Minoan settlements, where ornamental “fire dogs” – dog-shaped stone blocks – were used to balance skewers over a fire built between them.
Ancient Greece is pretty far from Brazil, though, so where did we pick up the method? Well, the idea of cooking meat over a fire on a skewer is certainly nothing new, and it has likely existed in some form since ancient times. For a more modern version, it was brought over with Portuguese settlement and incorporated into Brazilian food preparation.
The modern churrasco is a later development. It goes back to the 17th century – which sounds like a long time until you remember we started with 26,000 years earlier up above – and was an influence from the tropeiros, or explorers, who were heading into the Brazilian wilderness in search of gold.
A potentially apocryphal origin for the salt-and-fire method of cooking meat was that it came from how the tropeiros handled their food. Since they were cattle drivers and subsisted largely on meat, they needed some way to carry that meat with them. What they ended up doing was draping cuts of meat over the bare backs of their horses. This helped protect the horses from the heat of the sun, helped preserve the meat by drying it, and – in a bit of unsanitary history – flavored it with the salty sweat of the animals. This was then cooked, with the salt lingering for flavor.
Of course, these days, we use a simple crust of rock salt, and we pay a lot more attention to food safety and sanitary conditions. No horseback meat from us!
There’s not really a specific history to the skewers we use in churrasco because there’s not a lot that’s unique about them. They come in different lengths and different diameters to suit different kinds of meat. But, really, anything that is long, thin, straight, and can withstand the heat of the food is good enough to act as a Brazilian skewer. It’s more about the motion of the cooking than it is about the girth of the skewer, right?
What Type of Skewer is Right for Your Food?
There are two main things to know here.
The first is that the specific skewer you use doesn’t necessarily matter as much as you might think.
The second is that you really need to make sure to pick a skewer that matches what you’re trying to do and what other equipment you’re using.
Let’s say that you’re using a traditional firebox. These fireboxes work great as churrasco grills, but they’re pretty wide, which means you need at least a 28″ skewer to be able to set it down without causing problems. Otherwise, you’d need to stand there and hold the skewer the whole time, and that’s both tiring and risks a poor barbecue.
On the other hand, maybe you’re using a much more modern egg-shaped grill, and you want something to handle it all for you automatically. You can’t just use a regular skewer for the best effect; instead, you can use a rotisserie that is built into your grill. Some people love, for example, using a Joetisserie for their Brazilian BBQ at home. If you have it on hand, go ahead and use it!
A longer skewer allows you to keep your hands and the handles of the skewers further away from the heat while positioning the meat perfectly over the flame. Shorter skewers are more suitable for smaller grills and cooking spaces where you don’t have as much space to work.
A second consideration is the gauge of the skewer. This is how big around the skewer is. A larger skewer works best for things like picana, filet, and sirloin. Meanwhile, a smaller gauge works best for smaller meats like chicken wings or thighs or for long, thin foods like sausages.
There are also some variations on skewer designs. Forked skewers can be ideal for sausages to cook more of them at once since they can be arranged horizontally rather than vertically along the skewer. There are also wide, flat skewers that are a lot more like long knife blades, which can be used for ground meats, though this isn’t common in Brazilian churrasco.
The material of the skewer can also matter, though most of the time, you’re just going to be getting steel. Wooden skewers serve a good purpose but aren’t appropriate for churrasco. Beyond that, a lot of it just comes down to finding a design that feels good to handle!
Does All Brazilian Food Use Skewers?
Not at all! In fact, relatively little Brazilian food uses skewers. Skewers are part of churrasco, the Brazilian barbecue, but they’re pretty limited. You can’t cook rice or beans on a skewer, and you definitely can’t make feijoada on a skewer!
Even at Texas de Brazil, only some of what we have on our menu is cooked on skewers, and that’s just the meat. Everything else is either made to order or available in our salad area.
If you want to see Brazilian food skewers in action, you’re in luck. A huge part of the Rodizio experience is gauchos circulating through the dining room carrying their skewers of meat before heading back to the kitchen to keep them going. To see, experience, and enjoy a great churrasco is a joy. So, why not find where your nearest Texas de Brazil is located and stop on in?
Before you head out, don’t forget to join our eClub! This digital club gives you all sorts of special deals, coupons, and notifications of specials you won’t get anywhere else. We also offer catering, we have a full butcher shop for those delicious cuts of Brazilian meat, and we even sell our spice rub for the spicy picanha if you want to make it at home.
We hope to see you soon at Texas de Brazil!