Recipes from across Brazil

Unsweetened vinho de açaí—the thick blended pulp of the dark Amazonian palm berry—joins fried fish and farinha d’água in an everyday meal at the mouth of the Amazon. It is an Amazonian tradition shared with Pará, presented here through Amapá’s table, where açaí is treated as savory food.

Acarajé — a black-eyed pea fritter fried in dendê oil — is made from hulled, ground black-eyed peas and split to receive vatapá, caruru, dried shrimp, salad, and chile sauce served on the side.

Served steaming, angu de fubá — a soft porridge of fine cornmeal — spreads in the serving dish as a golden, yielding layer, made to receive the broth from chicken with okra, pot-roasted meat, or a ladleful of beans.

Few dishes say so much with so little: rice, garlic, chili, and pequi—a pungent Cerrado fruit with a stone. When the lid comes off, the fruit's aroma fills the kitchen, turning a side dish into a statement of origin.

Arroz de carreteiro — rice cooked with dried beef — brings together rice, desalted charque, and a sauté of onion and tomato. A single pot concentrates the memory of the carreteiros, their carts, and the preserved meat that crossed long distances.

In Maranhão, arroz de cuxá is more than a side dish: it brings rice together with a sauté of vinagreira — the tart leaf of Hibiscus sabdariffa — dried shrimp, toasted sesame, and cassava flour. Served beside fried fish or shrimp, it carries to the table the acidity that has made the cooking of São Luís unmistakable.

Maria-Isabel takes on a Tocantins accent with pequi: rice sautéed in the bottom of the pan with carne-de-sol, fresh seasonings, and the yellow fruit that heralds the Brazilian savanna’s season.

Azul-marinho is a caiçara preparation—of Brazil's traditional coastal fishing communities—of fish steaks simmered with green plantain; some of the plantain and broth become a fluid pirão, a porridge of broth and cassava flour, served alongside.

Baba de moça is an egg-yolk cream scented with coconut milk and bound with sugar syrup. Served cold in small portions, it moves slowly on the spoon and belongs to Bahia’s repertoire of sweets, where coconut meets time-honored confectionery techniques.

A Northeastern classic brought to Brasília’s tables by the migrant workers who came to build the capital, baião de dois—rice and beans cooked together with cheese and curd—brings cowpeas, rice, carne-de-sol—lightly salted, air-dried beef—, manteiga de garrafa, and queijo coalho together in a single pot.

A cornerstone dish of Ceará’s sertão, baião de dois brings rice and cowpeas together in one pot. In this generous version, desalted jabá, manteiga de garrafa, clarified butter aged in a bottle, and queijo de coalho give the meeting substance.

Baião de dois — rice and beans cooked together with cheese and curd — is an encounter: rice with feijão de corda, queijo coalho with manteiga de garrafa, everyday abundance with festive tables. In Paraíba, it accompanies long conversations, Sunday lunch, and the cadence of June nights.

Baião de dois — rice and beans cooked together with cheese and curd — brings rice and cowpeas into the same broth, finished with manteiga de garrafa, cilantro, and queijo de coalho. This classic from Brazil’s Northeast belongs to Pernambuco’s everyday and celebratory cooking.

Picture a market counter in Rio Branco while it is still dark: steaming cuscuz de milho — steamed cornmeal, unrelated to North African couscous — is loosened onto the plate, topped with ground beef sautéed with onion and tomato and, crowning it, a fried egg with a runny yolk. It is food for those who wake early and need strength — Acre’s most quintessential dish, simple and potent.

Slices of very ripe plantain, locally called pacovã, fried until golden and caramelized. A classic side on Acre tables, they balance the saltiness of river fish and meats with their soft sweetness.

In a sealed clay pot, beef and seasonings spend hours over a gentle flame until they become almost a single broth. At the table, white cassava flour makes pirão — a thick porridge of broth and cassava flour —, while plantain brings the sweet counterpoint that made barreado renowned.

A creamy batida — a blended cachaça cocktail — of pineapple, condensed milk, and white cachaça, blended with ice. It features Tarauacá pineapple, recognized in the region for its sweetness, in a tropical cocktail that is a party in a glass.

Born from a recipe attributed to Estação Ciência Mato do Açude in Jataí, this batida—a blended cachaça cocktail—brings together araticum pulp, cachaça, water, and condensed milk. In a chilled glass, the flavor of ripe fruit opens a small path into the Cerrado.

Made with bacuri — a fragrant Amazonian fruit — pulp, white cachaça, ice, and a touch of syrup, this batida carries into the glass a fruit that runs through Maranhão's landscape between the Amazon and the Cerrado.

Bacuri — a fragrant Amazonian fruit — pulp turns the batida into a drink of velvety texture and mature fragrance. Served well chilled, it evokes the meeting of a Cerrado fruit, ice, and cachaça — Brazil’s sugarcane spirit — without masking the fruit’s identity.

A Tocantins batida — a blended cachaça cocktail — made with buriti pulp, white cachaça and rapadura syrup. Chilled and brief, it turns the fruit of the wetland palm groves into a drink of intense fragrance and silken texture.

Published by Emater-MG in a coffee-cocktail booklet developed in Manhuaçu, this batida — a blended cachaça cocktail — brings together condensed milk, cachaça, and strong cold coffee. In its Minas reading, it places hillside coffee farming and the copper of northern stills in the same sip.

In Alagoas markets and home kitchens, cajá — a sharp yellow tropical plum — meets cachaça — Brazil’s sugarcane spirit — in a short, chilled, straightforward cocktail. It is a fruit drink made to be poured as soon as the blender stops, before the ice yields to the sun.

This Northeastern batida combines pulp of cajá — a sharp yellow tropical plum — with condensed milk, chilled milk, and white cachaça — Brazil’s sugarcane spirit. In Pernambuco, it has a particular bond with the Mata Sul, where the cajá tree is common among sugarcane fields, secondary scrublands, and fragments of forest.