Next: about 6 to 10 Feb 2027
Carnival in Rio and Bahia
The four days before Ash Wednesday, with street food in Bahia: acaraje fried in dende oil and served with malagueta pepper.
Spices for Carnival in Rio and Bahia
In Salvador, Bahia, carnival means trios eletricos, afoxe processions and street food. Acaraje, a fritter of black-eyed pea paste fried in red palm oil and split to hold vatapa, dried shrimp and fiery malagueta pepper sauce, is sold by the baianas in white lace. Cooking in Bahia has strong West African roots, and its signature seasoning is malagueta chilli, ginger, dried shrimp and coriander leaf. In Rio, the feijoada and caipirinhas are never far.
The spices
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Brazilian Carnival" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Malagueta pepper: Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil, CC BY 2.0, source
- Ginger: Venkatx5, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Coriander: Thamizhpparithi Maari, CC BY-SA 3.0, source