While dining at Gloria’s Portuguese restaurant recently, Pete and I tried a wonderful traditional dish known as feijoada. It was a rich smoky combination of fresh and salted meats, slow-cooked with beans.
I was keen to try making it at home, but most of the recipes I found online were for Brazilian feijoada, which is apparently quite different to the Portuguese version. In the end I settled on this recipe and adapted it to the ingredients I could find locally. It was a roaring success, with the boys asking me to make it again as they were eating it!
- 1 cup black beans, soaked overnight
- 1 can beans, drained and rinsed (kidney beans would be good, I used butter beans)
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 crushed cloves garlic
- 1 tomato, chopped
- 3 onions, finely chopped
- handful fresh parsley, chopped
- 3 carrots, peeled and finely chopped
- 1 chorizo, sliced
- 1 rack smoked ribs, cut into riblets
- 2 pork hocks, rind removed
- vegetable oil
- 1 cup tomato passata
- salt and pepper (optional)
Note: the original recipe quite charmingly advises to use “Assorted meat of personal choice (universally it is pork knee, pork sausage and salted dry beef)” . I think some smoked or cured meat is required to give the dish its unique flavour.
Also, I only added canned beans because I felt halfway through that the dish needed more beans. When I make this again, I’ll double the quantity of dried black beans and omit the tinned.
1. Drain the black beans and put them into a large stock pot. Add the meat, bay leaves and parsley. Add enough water to generously cover the meat, then put the lid on and bring the pot to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer very gently for a couple of hours.
2. In a separate pan, heat the oil and fry the onion, garlic, carrots and fresh tomato until soft. Ladle some liquid and softened black beans from the stockpot into the fry pan and mash the vegetables and beans together. Pour this all back into the stock pot, along with the drained canned beans (optional) and tomato passata. Continue cooking for at least an hour longer, or until the pork is tender and falling off the bone. Taste and adjust for seasoning (I didn’t have to add anything).
3. Accompany this with steamed rice, napping the meat with extra sauce before serving.
This is the first time I’ve tried to make feijoada, and I’m certainly not holding this recipe up as authoritative. It’s really more a record of our attempt. If you have any tips on how we can improve our version or make it more authentic, please let me know!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 
I have feijoada on my list of dishes to “blog about” and of course haven’t made it yet! Your post is enticing me…. I guess I’ll have to wait for the Fall to arrive, after being away from Brazil for so many years, I lost the ability to eat feijoada in hot weather…
Brazilian feijoada is a hot topic, generates a lot of arguments whenever two Brazilians tried to settle on a recipe ;-)
Sally, I’m looking forward to your post! I think you must be right – when I looked up Brazilian recipes, they were quite varied! :)
Sounds like a perfect autumn/winter dinner. Slow cooked, rich and smoky. My kind of meal!
That looks absolutely delicious Celia! I don’t know about authenticity but I do know that it looks mouth watering :D
Spice Girl, Lorraine, thank you! It was very moreish, particularly in this cold weather!
this could be my husband’s last bite on earth. we were discussing it earlier. smoky, saucy, meaty. there, all his requirements are met. looks great, i’ll have to cook it for him.
celia, you are so cool. i’m so happy i ran across your blog. thanks for the link, it really did make my day! did you see the mock dialogue in the comments? hilarious, thanks! hug.
My partner is portuguese and his aunty makes fantastic feijoada. It was a recipe that has been handed down generation by generation. She says that it is not as good as the way her mum use to make. It tastes marvellous to me!
This does look scrumptious! I like” the assorted meat of personal choice” part of the recipe.
Looks fab u lous! I just scored a 500 gram end of parma ham in the one and only italian deli in my city. I am going to save it up for a dish like this when the weather cools down a bit x
Dana, I’ve just restocked the fridge to make this dish again next week. Next time I’m going to use red kidney beans instead of the black beans – that’s what the dish we had in the restaurant used. So glad you enjoyed the clip – it was my kid’s favourite when they were little. We used to sing it at the full volume in the car! (For anyone else, I’m referring to this Sesame Street clip.)
Amy, has she given you a secret recipe? Please let me know if you ever blog about it – I’d love to see how they make it…
Heidi, that was the bit I liked too!
Jo, I’m not sure that would work – I’ve tried cooking with prosciutto and parma ham end pieces before, and the meat goes a bit stringy after boiling? Parma ham is soooo lovely too – seems a shame to waste it in a stew when you could wrap it around fresh figs…hmmm… :)
It is the end of the ham….. maybe it goes in a soup instead…. chopped into little tiny pieces or a ris ott o ? If it goes stringy then that won’t work, you are quite right….!
Jo, I’d be more inclined to chop it up and throw it onto pizza, or into a fried rice. Risotto would work well too. I’ve put it into pasta soup before, and found it went a little tough. I think it has to do with how the prosciutto/parma is cured – they’re not smoked, just salted and hung to dry.
Yum…As summer sets in here, though, it probably won’t go into rotation for a while..It’s enough that I’m testing holiday recipes in the heat!
I’ve looked it up and I’m going to dice it and have it with my asparagus! and keep a bit for soffrito for my next risotto.
‘Dice or chop thick-sliced of Parma Ham to flavour pastas, rice or risotto, or vegetables such as asparagus or peas.
Sauté finely diced Parma Ham with onions, carrots, celery and herbs to make a soffritto, or flavor base, for sauces and many other dishes.’