Mainland Brazil · Volume 44, Fire, Mate and the Colônia Table
Chimarrão
Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Chimarrão
Makes one gourd, shared and refilled continuously, the way it is actually drunk.
Ingredients
- as needed erva-mate, enough to fill the cuia roughly two thirds full, loosely, not compacted
- as needed water heated to 70 to 80°C, never boiling
Method
- Fill the cuia to about two thirds with erva-mate, without pressing it down.
- Tilt the cuia to roughly 45 degrees so the yerba banks to one side, leaving a hollow at the low side.
- Wet the hollow first with a little cold water, letting the yerba hydrate before any hot water reaches it.
- Insert the bomba into the low, wetted side, angled so its perforated tip sits in the damp yerba rather than the dry.
- Top up with water at 70 to 80°C, never boiling, which scorches the leaf and turns the drink bitter. Pass the gourd from person to person, topping up with fresh hot water between each turn rather than replacing the yerba until it is properly spent.
Notes
This chapter could not find a specific, credible step by step for curing a new porongo gourd before first use, and has not invented one; a reader buying a natural calabash cuia rather than a stainless steel one should expect to research the curing step separately.
What a modern chef changes
Erva-mate worked into a dry, savoury and bitter register, alongside the drink rather than instead of it.
Rung 4.
Method
- Toast loose erva-mate gently in a dry pan, then grind it fine in a spice grinder to make a genuinely usable erva-mate powder, the base for a farofa served alongside roasted meats, the way it already appears on Porto Alegre menus.
- Infuse erva-mate into a syrup or a spirit rather than only steeping it in water: a light sugar syrup or a neutral cachaça steeped with toasted yerba and strained through a chinois gives a clean, concentrated base for a dessert or a cocktail, in the spirit of the erva-mate cocktails and ganaches already served in Porto Alegre and São Paulo bars and kitchens.
- Serve the traditional gourd alongside, not instead of, either of these: the ritual itself is the point, and the modern applications are a second register built from the same leaf, not a replacement for passing the cuia round.