Our friend Roberto gave Kevin his first churrasco lesson on Sunday. Churrasco is a Portuguese word "roughly" meaning barbeque. Basically, we take massive amounts of meats, many differents cuts, and skewer them on long, sword-looking devices called espatos. If you click on the first picture to enlarge it, you'll see several different cuts of meat, with a long espato of chicken hearts on top. Sunday is the Day of Churrasco in our region. Everyone does it, every Sunday, usually with at least one other family or more. It's not an hour-long meal where the food is ready when you arrive and you can leave after dessert. Nope, this is an event! If we plan to attend a churrasco, we're pretty sure it'll be a 4-5 hour minimum time frame. One time we were at someone's house for 7 hours!! These people take time preparing their food and they take time to enjoy their food!! I can't say we've ever been disappointed!
We invited three other families over for our first churrasco. Roberto is a pro, so he took Kevin to buy the meat and gave him a few tips along the way. The families arrived around 11:30 and we
started to prepare the meat. Roberto covered the meat in a thick salt, rubbing it into every crevice he could find. The salt flavors the meat incredibly and just before the meat is ready to eat, the salt is knocked off. The long
espatos are placed in the grill area and are then lodged into holes at the back of the grill. We have yet to be in a home (or apartment) that didn't have one of these churrasco areas built in.
The meat is churrasco-ed (?) over hot coals. Whoever is manning the grill will occasionally turn the meat so it is evenly cooked. I'm still not a huge fan of pork or red meat, so that's my chicken on the top left espato.
Left, chicken hearts
. Right, grilled chicken hearts . I'm not really sure who likes this piece of meat, but it's just wrong to me. I've experimented. I can't do it. Don't get me wrong, I love to eat a good piece of grilled chicken, but those hearts should be banned from churrascos. Apparently someone likes them though, because there are a few on the espato. Again, .
Meat, beer, toothpicks. Staples at every churrasco in town. The Brazilians don't use their fingers for anything. I'm not really sure if they have finger foods. If someone is eating a sandwich, they use a napkin to hold it. A chicken heart. . . use a toothpick. A chicken leg. . . use a fork and a knife (which, by the way, is stupid and just doesn't work). Pizza. . . again, a fork and a knife. I'm a rebel sometimes and I use my fingers and get them dirty. I know, I know, I'm livin' on the edge. Normally, sausages are grilled and are finished long before the other meats. Sausages, chicken hearts and other toothpick-foods, are the appetizers. I had picked up some tortillas when we were in Porto Alegre so I made pinwheels, using cream cheese, sour cream, green onion, and a Fiesta spice mix from Tastefully Simple. I probably ate 25 pinwheels on Sunday, half while I was making them and the other half during the churrasco!! I really do like the food here, but eating familiar foods, like pinwheels, is such a treat sometimes!! We ate and talked and ate and talked some more. Then we ate lunch around 2:30!! We had salad, rice, and the grilled meat. After another hour of eating and talking and laughing, I brought out dessert. I made another Oreo Cheesecake and froze it this time. Oh man!! It almost tasted like Oreo Ice Cream, with an Oreo crust!! I was happy. Another familiar food. Our company started to leave around 4:30 and the last family left around 5. We were full, exhausted and happy. Although we had a good time, it's definitely not something we'll be hosting every Sunday!! If we could just order pizza and call it a churrasco, I'd be happy:) Then again, so many habits, customs, and quirks about this country are starting to grow on me!! Who knows, maybe this will grow on me too!!
