The country, in feijoada

I. Friday

Feijoada begins on Friday. The black beans go into cold water to soak overnight. The cured and salted pork — carne seca, paio, linguiça, pig’s ear, pig’s trotter, pig’s tail if you can find them — goes into its own cold water to desalt.

There is no skipping this step. The beans that have not soaked cook unevenly. The salted meats that have not been desalted make the whole pot unpleasantly salty in a way that cannot be corrected after the fact.

My mother started the soak on Friday afternoon without consulting a recipe or a clock. She knew when it was time because it was Friday afternoon and feijoada was Sunday. The calendar was the instruction.

II. The meats

There is no single correct list of meats for feijoada. Every family has a version. What is consistent: black beans as the foundation. Carne seca as the primary protein. Linguiça for richness and smoke. Paio for depth. Beyond that, the pork extremities. Ear for gelatin. Trotter for the same reason. Tail for flavor that the leaner cuts do not provide.

What would be wrong is using only lean cuts. Feijoada built from lean pork loin and ground beef is not feijoada. It is black bean soup. The gelatin from the extremities, the fat from the sausages, the depth from the cured beef — these are not incidental. They are the dish.

III. Saturday and Sunday

The beans go into the pot with fresh water. Not the soaking water — discard it. The meats go in by category, starting with the carne seca that needs the longest cooking. Then the ear and trotter. Then the sausages later, because they cook faster.

Three to four hours at a low simmer, with occasional skimming. The broth dark, thick, almost opaque. The feijoada goes back on the heat Sunday morning slowly over low flame. It was made yesterday and it is better today.

The family arrives mid-morning. Orange — sliced, served alongside to cut the richness. Farofa — toasted cassava flour with butter and sometimes egg — to scatter over the beans. White rice. Couve — collard greens — sliced thin and sautéed in garlic. The afternoon is claimed. The measure of a successful feijoada is not the recipe. It is whether people stayed.

Recipe — Feijoada

As told by Carla Mendes · São Paulo, Brasil · serves 8 to 10

• 2 days, Friday to Sunday
• 3–4 hour slow simmer
• 5+ cuts of meat
• 8–10 à mesa

For the pot

• Dried black beans, soaked overnight — 2 lb
• Carne seca (dried salted beef), desalted — 1 lb
• Paio or smoked sausage — ½ lb
• Linguiça — ½ lb
• Pig’s ear, cleaned — 1
• Pig’s trotter, split — 1
• Onion, finely diced — 1 large
• Garlic, minced — 8 cloves
• Bay leaves — 3
• Lard or neutral oil — 3 tbsp

The method

1. Friday: beans in cold water to soak overnight. Salted meats in their own cold water to desalt, changing the water once or twice.
2. Saturday morning: sauté onion in lard until translucent. Add garlic, cook 2 minutes.
3. Add soaked beans, carne seca, ear and trotter, bay leaves. Cover with cold water by 4 inches. Bring to a boil, skim the foam. Reduce to lowest simmer.
4. After 1 hour, add the paio. After another hour, add the linguiça. Cook 3 to 4 hours total until the beans are very soft and the broth is dark and thick.
5. Rest overnight. Reheat gently Sunday morning. Serve with white rice, farofa, sautéed couve, sliced orange. The orange is not optional.

About the contributor

Carla Mendes

Carla writes about Brazilian food culture and feijoada from São Paulo, Brasil. She grew up in a household where Sunday lunch took two days to prepare and six hours to finish, and considers that the correct ratio.

Editor’s notes — the longer view

A note on the calendar. The argument of this article — that feijoada is a Saturday and not a recipe — is not a metaphor. The dish was historically a slow-cooked communal meal of the enslaved and freed Afro-Brazilian population, made from the cuts of pork that the plantation households did not eat. The slow cook and the communal table are not garnish on the dish. They are the dish.

A note on the orange. Sliced orange is served alongside feijoada in São Paulo and most of southern Brazil. The orange does two things: the acid cuts the richness of the broth, and the vitamin C accelerates the absorption of the iron in the beans. The Portuguese probably brought the pairing. The Afro-Brazilian kitchens kept it because it works.

A note on the farofa. Farofa is toasted cassava flour, scattered over the feijoada at the table. It absorbs the broth, adds texture, gives the dish a structural element that the soft beans alone do not have. Cassava and its preparation came forward from pre-Columbian Tupi-Guarani cooking. Farofa on a feijoada plate is the moment three culinary traditions arrive on the same fork.

Back to American · Cook lane · HowTo: Food Edition home · American cuisine hub