What dendê oil is, exactly

I. What it tastes like

Dendê oil has a flavor that is not subtle. It is earthy, rich, with a slight bitterness underneath, and a color that stains everything it touches a deep orange-red. The color is from carotenoids — the same compounds that make carrots orange and tomatoes red — present in the unrefined oil in high concentration.

Refined palm oil, which is what most of the world uses in processed foods, has had these compounds removed. It is white or pale yellow, flavorless, cheap. It is not dendê. If a recipe calls for dendê and you substitute refined palm oil, you have not substituted — you have omitted.

II. Acarajé

Acarajé is made from black-eyed peas ground into a paste with onion and salt, formed into fritters, and fried in dendê oil. The peas are soaked overnight, their skins removed by rubbing between the palms, then ground until smooth. The paste is beaten with a wooden spoon to aerate it before frying in very hot dendê — a clay or iron pot, traditionally, set over a charcoal fire.

Acarajé is split and filled: dried shrimp, vatapá, caruru, a small hot pepper. It is street food. It is sold by baianas de acarajé — women dressed in the white ceremonial clothing of Candomblé. Acarajé is an offering to Iansã, the orixá of storms. The baiana who sells it is performing a function that is both commercial and sacred.

III. Candomblé and the kitchen

Candomblé is an Afro-Brazilian religion brought to Bahia by enslaved Yoruba people from what is now Nigeria and Benin. The orixás — the deities of Candomblé — each have specific foods associated with them. Dendê oil appears in many of them. The kitchen and the altar share ingredients because the boundary between cooking and offering is not as clear in this tradition as it is in others.

You are not making a West African-influenced Brazilian fritter. You are making something that connects, through a specific oil and a specific technique, to a set of practices that people kept alive under conditions that were specifically designed to eliminate them. That is what dendê oil is, exactly.

IV. Moqueca

Moqueca baiana — the Bahian version — is made with dendê oil and coconut milk. Fish and shrimp, fresh, cut into large pieces. Tomato, onion, garlic, cilantro. The base is cooked in dendê until fragrant. Coconut milk goes in next. The seafood goes in last and cooks gently in the sauce.

Moqueca capixaba — from Espírito Santo — uses annatto oil and no coconut milk. It is a different dish. Both are correct in their own regional contexts. Only the Bahian version uses dendê. Use what you have. Know what you are approximating.

Recipe — Moqueca Baiana

As told by Vanda dos Santos · Salvador, Bahia · serves 4

• 20 min marinade
• 15 min cook
• 3 tbsp dendê (not optional)
• 1 panela de barro

For the panela

• White fish fillets (grouper, cod), cut large — 2 lb
• Large shrimp, peeled and deveined — ½ lb
• Dendê oil — 3 tbsp
• Onion, sliced in half-moons — 1 large
• Garlic, minced — 4 cloves
• Roma tomatoes, diced — 3
• Green bell pepper, sliced — 1
• Coconut milk — 1 cup
• Juice of 1 lime
• Fresh cilantro, salt, pepper

The method

1. Season fish and shrimp with lime juice, salt, and pepper. Marinate 20 minutes.
2. Heat dendê oil in a clay pot or heavy pan over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened.
3. Add garlic, tomatoes, and bell pepper. Cook 5 minutes until vegetables begin to break down.
4. Add coconut milk and bring to a gentle simmer.
5. Add fish, cook 5 minutes. Add shrimp, cook 3 to 4 minutes more until just cooked through.
6. Finish with fresh cilantro and a final drizzle of raw dendê on top. Serve with white rice. Do not substitute the dendê oil.

About the contributor

Vanda dos Santos

Vanda writes about Afro-Brazilian cuisine and Bahian food traditions from Salvador, Bahia. She comes from a family of cooks and Candomblé practitioners and has been making moqueca in a clay pot her grandmother taught her to season.

Editor’s notes — the longer view

A note on the baianas de acarajé. The women who sell acarajé in Salvador wear white ceremonial dress that signals their initiation into Candomblé. The tabuleiro — wooden tray — is set up on street corners across the Pelourinho. In 2005, Brazil’s government recognised the trade as part of the nation’s intangible cultural heritage. The recognition was overdue. The work has been the same for three hundred years.

A note on the colour. Unrefined dendê oil is the colour of a tropical sunset — deep orange-red, almost amber against the light. It stains the rim of a clay pot. It stains the white napkin under the acarajé. The stain is informational: it tells you the oil is unrefined, the carotenoids intact, the flavour at full strength.

A note on the West African link. The closest cousin to acarajé is West African akara — black-eyed pea fritters fried in red palm oil, eaten across Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Togo. The recipe travelled across the Atlantic in the heads of enslaved cooks and arrived on a different continent with the same shape, the same oil, the same technique. The fritter is a survival document.

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