How to make authentic Brazilian Rice and Beans

How to make authentic Brazilian Rice and Beans

This is post is dedicated to all my friends and neighbors that loved my mom’s rice and beans at our annual birthday parties.

Rice and beans is the most traditional and popular Brazilian dish, due to the fact that: 1) it’s cheap 2) it tastes good 3) it’s extremely filling and has pratically all the main nutrients, including a huge dose of protein, iron, and carbohydrates. I eat this almost every day.

You’re going to need:

• Any type of dry beans or lentils (here I use red beans, but the traditional beans used in the Brazilian dish is black).
• 1 or 2 onions per 500 grams
• 2 cloves of garlic per 500 grams of beans
• Laurel leafs
• Olive oil
• A pressure cooker (optional, but it really makes the cooking easier)
• Rice

To make this dish, you’re going to need to start preparing it the night before. That’s because the beans need to be soaked for at least 8 hours. Place the quantity of beans you want to make in a bowl and fill it up with water. If you’re making this for a party or for a big dinner, use 200 grams per person. Here, I made 500 grams, because I freeze the beans afterwards and place them in plastic containers.  This way I have ready lunch to eat when I come back from school during the week J

So, the next day, you’re going to notice that the beans practically doubled in size. They’ve absorbed the water and they’re ready to be cooked.  Rinse the beans in clean water and place in a large pot or your pressure cooker.

If you’re using a pressure cooker, all you need to do is fill the pot with water until there is at least 3 cm of water covering your beans. Add two laurel leafs (if you can’t find these leaves, it’s ok). Close the pressure cooker firmly, and cook until the pressure cooker lets out steam for about 20 minutes. Wait until all the pressure is let out, open the lid, and check if the beans are soft.

If you’re not using a pressure cooker, you’re going to need to cook the beans for a couple of hours in a large pot with lots of water, to make sure the beans get soft. Be careful to add water as the water evaporates, otherwise the beans will burn and it will get ruined.

After the beans are soft: the water is still soupy like, needs more cooking!

Keep cooking the beans on low fire, even after they are soft. The liquid needs to have a creamy-like consistence.

Once the beans are soft, you can chop the onions and the garlic. Simmer the onions and garlic in olive oil until the onions turn transparent and the garlic light brown. 

Add a ladle of beans to the onion mixture. Crush the beans with a wooden spoon until it makes a paste. Add salt to both the onion mixture and to the pot of beans, which should still be cooking.

Add the onion paste to the pot of beans. Keep cooking until the beans are creamy.

Nice and creamy, after a good hour cooking on low fire

Serve with rice! We Brazilians like to eat rice and beans like this: beans on top of the rice, accompanied by greens and an orange.

Enjoy!