Fraldinha
Fraldinha is the Brazilian name for the bottom sirloin flap, a long flat muscle with coarse fibres and a loose grain that sits between the flank and the sirloin. It is one of the pillars of churrasco, cooked over charcoal with nothing on it but coarse salt, because the cut already carries enough fat and connective tissue to season itself. What makes or breaks it is not the fire but the knife: the grain is unusually visible and unusually coarse, and slicing along it instead of across it produces meat that no amount of chewing will get through. It is served with vinagrete and farofa, both of which are made while the coals come up to temperature.
Ingredients
- 1.2 kgfraldinha
- 2 tbspcoarse sea salt
- 1 tspground black pepper
- 150 gcassava flour
- 40 gunsalted butter
- 2 piecesplum tomatoes
- 1 piecered onion
- 1 piecegreen pepper
- 3 tbspred wine vinegar
- 3 tbspolive oil
- 2 tbspchopped parsley
Method
- Trim the fraldinha, leaving the thin fat cap in place and removing only the silverskin from the flat side. Now find the grain: it runs the length of the cut in coarse visible bands. Score a small nick at one end perpendicular to it, so that after resting you still know which way to slice.
- Rub the meat with the coarse salt on both sides and leave it out for 30 to 40 minutes to come to room temperature. Cold meat straight from the fridge needs longer over the fire, which overcooks the thin end before the thick end is ready.
- Make the vinagrete: dice the tomatoes, red onion and green pepper to 5 mm, mix with the vinegar, 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, a pinch of salt and the parsley, and leave it to sit at least 15 minutes so the onion loses its bite.
- Make the farofa: melt the butter in a wide pan over medium heat, add the cassava flour and toast it 5 to 7 minutes, stirring constantly, until it turns sandy gold and smells nutty. It burns in seconds once it colours, so take it off early rather than late.
- Build a charcoal fire with the coals banked to one side so you have a hot zone and a cooler one. The hot zone is ready when you can hold a hand 10 cm above the grate for only 2 to 3 seconds.
- Grill fat side down over the hot zone for 4 to 5 minutes, until the fat renders and the surface is deeply browned, then turn and give it 4 to 5 minutes on the second side. Move it to the cooler zone and cook to an internal 52 to 54 °C for medium rare, which takes another 5 to 10 minutes depending on thickness.
- Rest the meat on a board for 10 minutes without covering it, then slice across the grain at a slight angle into strips about 1 cm thick. Season the cut faces with a little more coarse salt and serve with the vinagrete and farofa alongside.
FAQ
Almost certainly the slicing direction. Fraldinha has long coarse fibres, and cutting parallel to them leaves them full length on the plate. Look at the cut surface: you should see short fibre ends, not long strands running the length of each slice.
Rate this
Keep browsing
More dishes from the Brazilian archive — picked by overlap with what you're cooking now.
Join the conversation
Comments
No comments yet — be the first!