Mocotó is a popular Brazilian stew made from cow's feet, beans, and various vegetables. The name of the dish stems from the Kimbundu word mbokotó. Nutritious and inexpensive, the stew was originally made by slaves who used cuts of meat that were thrown away by the landowners. Mocotó is especially popular in the southern and northeastern parts of Brazil. Although Brazil's main weather-related problem is how to cool off, mocotó is a perfect winter stew that warms one up, since it is a part of Portuguese culinary heritage, and the mountainous parts of Portugal can be notoriously cold. Brazilians usually consume it at the end of the night to prevent a hangover, or early in the morning, to cure it.
Literally translated to cheese bread, pão de queijo has its origins in the culinary inventions of African slaves, when they started to use the residue of the cassava plant. A fine white powder, or starch, was rolled into balls and baked. At the time, no cheese was added, so it was just baked starch, but at the end of the 19th century, when slavery ended, other foods started to become available to the Afro-Brazilians for the first time. In the state of Minas Gerais, the dairy center of Brazil, cheese and milk started to be added to the starchy balls, and pão de queijo was created. Today, it is a popular Brazilian snack or breakfast food that is also widely consumed in northern Argentina, sold at numerous coffee shops, snack bars, and bakeries.
Churrasco is a Brazilian barbecue method where juicy pieces, slices, steaks, and chops of beef, veal, lamb, pork, and chicken are placed on big skewers and grilled over wood fire. It started in the early 1800s when the Gauchos (European immigrants that settled in the Rio Grade do Sul area) would get together and start a fire, adding large portions of meat on skewers and slowly grilling the meat. In the restaurants, known as churrascarias, the skewers are paraded across the restaurant in a flashy manner, and the waiters circulate among the tables in order to show off the succulent meat to hungry diners. After the customers have chosen their preferred type of meat, it is sliced off the skewers to the dining plates. Also known as rodízio, the theme of this barbecue experience is all you can eat, so the customers should know to come with an empty stomach. Beef is the most popular option, although livers and hearts are especially rich and chewy. In Brazil, the meat will often be from the zebu, a succulent, lean breed of cattle with a hump that's especially popular in churrasco as a cut of meat called cupim. Churrasco starts with appetizers and a variety of salads offered from a big buffet, as a preview of things to come. The usual accompaniments for the meat include farofa grains, rice, fried potatoes, potato salad, steamed greens, black beans, onions, fried bananas, and numerous chili-based sauces. After the big meal, it is typical to consume grilled pineapple slices, serving as a palate cleanser as well as a tasty dessert. Churrasco (lit. barbecue) is also popular as a cooking method in countries such as Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Chile, and each country has their own favorite cuts of meat and accompaniments for this popular barbecue style.
One of Brazil's favorite street foods, coxinha (lit. little thigh) is a crispy croquette filled with chicken meat and cream cheese that is cleverly shaped into a chicken drumstick, then breaded and deep-fried. Coxinha originated around São Paulo in the 19th century, and by the 1950s it spread to Rio de Janeiro and Paraná, having now become one of the most popular salgados (savory appetizers) across the country. Legend has it that coxinha was first made for the Brazilian princess Isabel's son who only liked chicken thigh meat. However, according to food historians, it was probably invented during the industrialization of São Paulo to be marketed as a cheaper and more durable substitute to traditional chicken cuts that were sold at the gates of local factories as snacks for the workers. Nowadays, coxinhas can be found anywhere from Brazilian snack bars called lanchonetes, cafés, buffets and even bakeries to numerous stand-up lunch counters and street food stalls. The perfect coxinha has a golden, crunchy crust which envelopes the chicken stock and flour dough and breaks away into its creamy interior made with shredded chicken breast and Catupiry requeijão cremoso cheese. It is typically flavored with onion, garlic, cilantro, and lime. For a well-rounded snack, these delicious Brazilian chicken-filled nibbles are usually served with hot chili sauce, vinaigrette or garlic mayonnaise, and best enjoyed with a glass of cold beer.
In Bahia, the northeastern state of Brazil, there is a dish that is considered to be the most popular street food around, called acarajé. It consists of black-eyed peas or cowpeas that are formed into a ball, deep-fried in dendé palm oil, split in half, then stuffed with flavorful, spicy pastes made from numerous ingredients such as cashews, palm oil, and shrimp. The most common accompaniments to the dish include a tomato salad and homemade hot pepper sauces. The recipe for the dish originated during the colonial period of the country, from the Nigerian slaves who first started selling it on the streets of Brazil. Today, acarajé represents a good example of how African influences have been shaping Brazil's cultural heritage and its culinary identity.
X-Tudo is an unusually tall burger originating from Brazil. Although not much is known about its invention, this burger (which means with everything or cheese everything when translated) has no fixed ingredients, but it always has many toppings. They often include beef patties, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, corn, melted cheese, sausages, and fried potato sticks or shoestring potatoes. This mammoth of a burger is typically served in paper trays, and eating it is no easy feat – most people can't get their mouth around it because it's so huge, which makes for a messy eating experience.
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