Feijoada

Ingredients

• Black beans — soaked overnight700 g
• Salted pork — soaked 12 hours400 g
• Smoked pork ribs500 g
• Smoked sausage300 g
• Pork belly300 g
• Onions2
• Garlic6 clove
• Bay leaves3
• Oranges2
• Collard greens — shredded fine300 g
• Cooked rice600 g
• Neutral oil2 tbsp

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Boil the salted meat in fresh water for twenty minutes and drain: the last stage of getting the salt out.

   25 min

2. 2

   Cover the beans with water three fingers above, add the bay, the ribs and the salted meat, and simmer for an hour and a half.

   90 min

3. 3

   Add the belly and the sausage and give it another hour. The beans should be collapsing and the liquid thickening on its own.

   60 min

4. 4

   Fry the onion and garlic until golden, add a ladle of beans, mash them and return it all to the pot. That thickens the stew and deepens it.

   10 min

5. 5

   Fry the greens over a high flame for two minutes with garlic — they should stay bright green and crisp.

   5 min

6. 6

   Serve the beans and meat with the rice, greens and orange segments alongside. Everyone builds their own plate.

About the dish

Feijoada is a whole day's cooking for a crowd. The point is the range of meat: smoked sausage for smoke, salted pork for salt, fresh cuts for texture. One kind of meat will not build it.

The salted meat is soaked at least twelve hours with three changes of water. Skip that and the dish is inedibly salty, with no way back.

The orange on the table is not decoration. Its acidity and bitterness cut the fat, and without it the third spoonful starts to feel heavy.

Worth knowing

• — Feijoada is better the next day, which is why it is cooked the day before: overnight the flavour evens out.
• — Salt only at the very end and only after tasting. The salted meat gives salt to the pot the whole way through.
• — If the beans will not soften, the problem is their age rather than the heat. Old beans can take three hours.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

780 kcal

Protein

46 g

Fat

38 g

Carbs

62 g

More from Brazil

• Pão de queijo — Cheese balls of tapioca starch — a crust outside, a stretchy hollow inside. No wheat and no yeast.