Baiao de Dois Recipe Calculator

Baião de dois: Ceará’s rice-and-beans classic

Mention Ceará, or the Brazilian Northeast in general, and baião de dois is one of the first dishes that comes to mind. The base is rice and green beans (feijão-verde) cooked together. From there you add carne seca (sun-dried beef), shredded queijo coalho (rennet cheese), manteiga de garrafa (clarified butter) and chives. The name roughly means “two-step rhythm”, a nod to the rice and beans simmering together in one pot.

The usual per-person amounts run like this: rice = 150 g/person, green_beans = 80 g/person, carne_seca = 50 g/person (already desalted), queijo_coalho ≈ 40 g/person, manteiga_garrafa ≈ 10 g/person. If your carne seca is still raw and salted, multiply by 1.4 so the desalting loss doesn't leave you short.

The dish goes back to the 19th century in the Sertão. There, cattle vaqueiros (cowboys) leaned on ingredients that kept well in the heat, sun-dried beef, hard cheese and clarified butter, and rounded them out with rice and the fresh green beans grown nearby. You'll still find it on the menu of typical restaurants in Ceará, Piauí, Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte, and it's a fixture of São João (June) festivities.

Applications

This calculator earns its keep at family lunches, June festivals (Festa Junina, São João), regional restaurants in Fortaleza and the Sertão, gastronomic tourism around the Northeast, weddings with a regional menu, catering and event planning. Small restaurants can also lean on it to work out the cost per portion of carne seca and queijo coalho.

FAQ

Can I substitute dry beans for green beans? Feijão-verde (fresh green cowpea, Vigna unguiculata) is what gives the dish its real flavour and creamy texture. Can't find it fresh? Frozen green beans work, or feijão-de-corda rehydrated for 8 h. Just don't reach for carioca or black beans, because at that point you've made something else.

How do I prepare the carne seca? Soak it in cold water for 12–24 h to desalt, swapping the water 3–4 times along the way. Boil for 15 min, drain, shred it, then brown the pieces in the manteiga de garrafa before they go in with the rice and beans.

What’s the difference between baião de dois and arroz de carreteiro? Baião brings green beans, queijo coalho and clarified butter to the pot, and it's a Northeast dish. Arroz de carreteiro sticks to rice and shredded charque with no beans at all, a Rio Grande do Sul tradition.