Brazilian Keto Cookbook: Table of Contents

Today the Mercadão holds more than 290 stalls piled with tropical fruit, cheeses from Minas Gerais, cured meats, spices, salt cod and coffee. Visitors line up for its towering mortadella sandwich and its salt cod pastel, but the market is also a living picture of how Paulistanos start their day: with butter, cheese, eggs, good coffee and fruit blended into creamy vitaminas. This chapter takes the flavors of that market and the corner padaria, the neighborhood bakery where São Paulo eats breakfast standing at the counter, and rebuilds them for a keto kitchen.

The gold rush also shaped the food. Miners, farmers and enslaved workers needed meals that were cheap, filling and made from what the farms of Minas produced: pork, cassava, corn and cheese. Those humble ingredients became pão de queijo, crackling torresmo and the snacks still sold today in the town’s botecos, the small neighborhood bars where friends gather over a cold drink and a plate of petiscos. In 2024 the traditional ways of making artisanal Minas cheese were recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. This chapter gathers Brazil’s favorite salgados, the savory bites found in every bakery, snack bar and birthday party, and rebuilds them for keto.

Arrive before dawn and you will see boats unloading river fish and baskets of açaí berries from the islands, while stalls sell bottles of yellow tucupi, bundles of numbing jambu leaves, Amazonian herbs and fiery pimenta de cheiro peppers. Those ingredients are the soul of Pará’s famous soups, such as tacacá, served steaming in gourd bowls, and pato no tucupi, the duck stew at the center of Belém’s great October festival, the Círio de Nazaré. This chapter starts in Belém and travels across Brazil, gathering the broths, soups and stews that Brazilians turn to in cool weather, after a long night, or whenever someone needs comfort.

The missions did not live on prayer alone. São Miguel ran a vast cattle ranch, or estância, and was one of the major cattle-breeding centers of the region. Herds raised by the missions, and the cattle that wandered free across the southern pampas, became the foundation of the gaúcho way of life. Cowboys on the open range cooked their beef the simplest way possible: big cuts on a stick, coarse salt, and a slow fire. That is churrasco, and it is still the pride of Rio Grande do Sul. This chapter brings the grill, the skewer and the cast-iron pan into your kitchen, from salt-crusted picanha to the beloved beef dishes of Rio, São Paulo and the Northeast.

Brasília was built from scratch in the late 1950s in the dry cerrado highlands, in a district carved out of the state of Goiás. Tens of thousands of workers, nicknamed candangos, came from every corner of the country, especially the Northeast, Minas Gerais and Goiás, and they brought their family recipes with them. Chicken was the dish almost every one of them knew how to cook: galinhada from Goiás, frango com quiabo from Minas, xinxim from Bahia. This chapter gathers those regional chicken favorites, from Sunday roast chicken to creamy strogonoff, in a city that has always been a meeting place for all of Brazil.

The same mountain trails that carried gold down to the coast carried food up into the interior. Tropeiros, the mule drivers who led pack trains along these routes for weeks at a time, lived on food that would keep: salted and smoked pork, sausages, beans and toasted flour. Their trail cooking gave Brazil feijão tropeiro, and the farms of the interior learned to preserve pork in its own fat. Paraty itself turned to cachaça, the sugarcane spirit its stills still produce today. This chapter celebrates the pork dishes that grew from those roads, from the great feijoada to crackling pururuca.

Salvador was one of the great ports of the Atlantic slave trade, and the African men and women brought to Bahia shaped its kitchen more than any other influence. Dendê oil from the African oil palm, okra, dried shrimp, ginger and fresh chilies meet Indigenous and Portuguese techniques in dishes like moqueca, vatapá, caruru and bobó. Many of these foods are also sacred offerings in Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion that is deeply rooted in Bahia. Walk through Pelourinho today and you will hear drum groups rehearsing, smell dendê sizzling, and see baianas de acarajé in white lace skirts and turbans, whose craft was registered as part of Brazil’s cultural heritage in 2005. This chapter brings that coastal, coconut-and-dendê cooking to your table, with the starchy sides swapped for keto-friendly ones.

The land that feeds the falls also feeds Brazil. Paraná’s deep red soil makes it one of the country’s great farming states, and waves of Polish, Ukrainian, German, Italian and Japanese immigrants brought their vegetable gardens with them. For centuries the state was also crossed by tropeiros, mule drivers who herded animals north from Rio Grande do Sul through Paraná’s highland plains to the market at Sorocaba in São Paulo. They lived on beans, manioc flour, salt pork and greens cooked over campfires, and their trail food became feijão tropeiro. Paraná’s own beloved staple is pinhão, the seed of the Paraná pine, roasted or boiled every winter, though it is far too starchy for keto. The sides in this chapter are the everyday companions of the Brazilian plate: greens, farofa, “rice,” purées and simple sautéed vegetables, all made low carb.

Most visitors reach the dunes from the town of Barreirinhas on the Preguiças River, then hike over the sand to swim in the warm, rain-filled lagoons. Life on this coast revolves around fishing and the heat, and Maranhão’s cooking leans on shrimp, fresh fish and tangy greens like vinagreira, the leaf that flavors the state’s famous arroz de cuxá. In a climate this hot, a crisp, cool salad is as much a part of the Brazilian table as rice and beans. The salads in this chapter range from everyday plates of chayote and cabbage to the creamy party salads that crowd the table at Christmas, all made keto.

Today Olinda is best known for its Carnival, when the hills fill with frevo and maracatu music and giant papier-mâché puppets, the bonecos gigantes, dance through the streets. The cooking of Pernambuco and the wider Northeast is bold and generous with seasoning: garlic pounded with salt, fiery fresh peppers, golden bottle butter from the dry backlands, and a bowl of vinagrete on every table where meat is grilled. This short chapter gathers those everyday sauces and condiments, naturally low in carbs or easily made so, which you will use throughout the book.

The mountain’s name is a reminder of how deeply sugar shaped Brazil. Sugar plantations built the colony’s wealth, and the country’s sweets grew from Portuguese convent recipes rich in egg yolks, coconut brought by the Portuguese, and later sweetened condensed milk, which became the heart of Brazilian dessert making in the 20th century. This chapter keeps the classics, from brigadeiros and quindim to pudim and passion fruit mousse, and swaps the sugar and condensed milk for allulose and slowly reduced cream.

Copacabana is Rio’s great outdoor living room. Every New Year’s Eve, an estimated two million people dressed in white gather on the sand for the fireworks. On ordinary days, vendors walk the beach with metal drums of iced mate and lemonade, calling out to sunbathers, while beach kiosks serve caipirinhas and coconut drinks. This short chapter brings you those flavors, from a strong morning cafezinho to an icy batida, all made without sugar.