Last week, the good folks at the Texas de Brazil Churrascaria let us have a sneak peak at how they make some of their most beloved dishes. If you have never been, a churrascaria, or Brazilian steakhouse, is a carnivore’s dream. At Texas de Brazil and other Brazilian steakhouses, servers walk around with large skewers of various meats, freshly slicing cuts of pork, beef and chicken right onto your plate until you are completely stuffed.
At their Chicago location, Culinary Director Evandro Caregnato demonstrated the ins and outs of the steakhouse, from making savory skewered meats to delicious side dishes and drinks. Here are some of his top cooking tips:
- To add an easy crust to your steaks, coat them in corn starch before grilling. Corn starch won’t add any flavor but it will form a crispy exterior to the steak.
- To get the most flavor out of pork and chicken, marinate overnight. In a pinch, use Italian dressing spiced up with lots of fresh herbs.
- For churrascaria-style steak at home, use the cap of a top sirloin and choose a piece with lots of marbling. Marbling is the amount of fat dispersed in the muscle tissue. The more fat there is, to more tender and juicy the piece of meat will be.
- Know your grill. The more practice you have grilling, the more you will know how long to grill a steak or another cut of meat to perfection.
- When cooking with bananas, choose ones that are yellow with green tips.
Besides great tips, Caregnato also shared some terrific Brazilian recipes that let you re-create that Texas de Brazil taste. In this video, Caregnato demonstrates how to make a chimichurri sauce, an Argentinian-style steak sauce.
For more videos of our time with Texas de Brazil, check out the RecipeLion YouTube Channel.
If you’re interested in cooking like the pros at Texas de Brazil, then here is one for you to enjoy: Chicken Wrapped in Bacon.
Chicken Wrapped In Bacon
Ingredients
- 16 cubes of boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into 2-ounce pieces
- 16 thin slices of applewood-smoked bacon
- 1/3 cup lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons red wine
- 16 leaves fresh sage
- 1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon fresh thyme
- 1/2 tablespoon fresh rosemary
- Small bamboo skewers
- 1/3 cup olive oil
- 1 pinch cumin
- Fresh cracked pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Create the marinade by combining the lemon juice and wine in a large mixing bowl. Slowly work in the olive oil using a wire whisk. Add the thyme, rosemary and cumin.
- On a separate platter, season the cubes of chicken with the kosher salt.
- Place the seasoned chicken into the mixing bowl with the marinade, lay the bacon flat on a clean surface and put a cube of chicken on top of each slice of bacon.
- On top of each cube, place a leaf of sage and then wrap the chicken with the bacon. Carefully place cracked pepper on the bacon.
- Pierce each bacon-wrapped cube of chicken onto a pre-soaked bamboo skewer. You should be able to fit 1 to 3 pieces on each skewer.
- Place the skewers onto a preheated charcoal grill. Make sure to turn them frequently and grill until the bacon gets crispy and the chicken’s internal temperature reaches 165 degrees F.
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