Africa

Cachupa: Cape Verde's Slow-Simmered Hominy and Bean Stew

Name: Cachupa: Cape Verde's Slow-Simmered Hominy and Bean Stew
Prep time: 12 h
Cook time: 2 h 15 min
Total time: 14 h 15 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Cape Verdean
Ingredients: 300 g Dried hominy or pozole corn; 150 g Dried white beans; 100 g Dried red kidney beans; 100 g Dried chickpeas; 300 g Linguiça or chorizo; 200 g Pork belly, in a block; 100 g Slab bacon; 2 (large) Onions; 5 cloves Garlic; 3 (medium) Tomatoes; 1/4 head Cabbage; 1 (medium) Sweet potato; 2 Green bananas or plantains; 3 Bay leaves; 2 tsp Smoked paprika; 3 tbsp Olive oil; 2 and 1/2 tsp Salt; 1/2 tsp Black pepper; 1.5 L to 1.8 L Water

Cape Verde's national dish, cachupa, made with hominy, beans, pork and a linguiça-style sausage. Covers rica vs. pobre, next-morning guisada, cooking dried beans, a green banana substitute, adjusting the liquid, storage and how it is eaten.

Published: October 24, 2026Total: 14 hr 15 minLevel: Intermediate

Cooking flow

Cooking steps

STEP 11 / 5

Soak the corn and beans

12 hours

Dried hominy and several kinds of beans soaking in water — The night-before prep. Soak the dried hominy and three kinds of beans in plenty of water. By morning they should have more than doubled

Put the dried hominy, white beans, kidney beans and chickpeas in separate bowls and cover each with at least three times its volume of water. In hot weather, soak in the refrigerator. The next day, they are ready when the kernels have swelled, the wrinkles on the beans have smoothed, and only a few split kernels float. Drain in a sieve and rinse under running water to remove the cloudy water.

If you make it with canned hominy and beans, you can skip this step. However, the canning liquid brings saltiness and acidity, so drain and rinse lightly, and reduce the final salt by about 1/2 tsp.

STEP 22 / 5

Build the aromatic base with meat and onion

15 min

Browning pork and bacon in the pot — Making the base. Cook the onion in the fat of the pork belly and bacon, then add the paprika and tomato. This red oil is the foundation of cachupa's flavor

Put 3 tbsp olive oil in a heavy pot of 5 L or more and warm over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook for 5 minutes; when the fat has rendered clear and the edges have shrunk slightly, add the pork belly. Keep cooking over medium heat for 4 minutes, until the surface is lightly browned, then add the onion and garlic.

When the onion is translucent, lower the heat to medium-low, add 2 tsp smoked paprika and stir for 30 seconds. Before the powder scorches, add the tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Move on when the oil is stained red, the tomato's edges have broken down and the brown bits from the bottom of the pot have returned to the sauce. The liquid should not run thin but cling lightly to the meat and onion as a red sauce.

STEP 33 / 5

Simmer the beans and corn on low heat

90 min

Corn and beans bubbling slowly in the pot — An hour and a half of simmering. The corn and beans soften slowly and the broth begins to thicken

Add the soaked hominy and beans to the pot with 1.5 L water, 3 bay leaves and 2 tsp salt. Bring to a boil once over high heat, skim off the foam that rises to the surface, then lower to low heat and set the lid slightly ajar. Keep a heat at which small bubbles continuously rise to the surface and the whole pot barely murmurs.

Stir from the bottom every 30 minutes, and if the water level drops below the beans, add 200 ml hot water at a time. Move on when a white bean mashes easily between your fingers and no hard white core remains in the center of the hominy. Adding too much water at once makes the broth thin and slow to recover.

STEP 44 / 5

Combine the vegetables and sausage

20 min

Adding cabbage and sweet potato to the pot — Adding vegetables. Cabbage and sweet potato bring color and texture variety. The linguiça is browned separately before it is combined

Add the sweet potato, green banana and cabbage to the pot and simmer over low to medium-low heat for 20 minutes. Keep the surface barely trembling, and if the potatoes look ready to fall apart, avoid stirring too much.

At the same time, warm a separate skillet over medium heat, slice the linguiça or chorizo into 1 cm (1/2 in) rounds and brown for 5 minutes. When the cut faces have colored and fat and aroma come out, add them to the pot. Browning them at the end and combining them leaves the smoky outline in the gentle flavor of the beans better than simmering them from the start.

STEP 55 / 5

Set the thickness and rest

10 min

Finished cachupa served in a deep bowl — The finished cachupa. Heaped in a deep bowl and garnished with sausage rounds

Remove the lid and reduce over low heat for 5–10 minutes. The target thickness is where a wooden spoon dragged along the bottom leaves a trail that fills back in right away with broth. Adjust with 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper, and remove the bay leaves. On days when you used a salty sausage, add salt 1/4 tsp at a time.

Turn off the heat and let it sit for 5 minutes so the beans and corn absorb the broth and the flavor settles. Ladle generously into deep bowls and top with the sausage rounds. If you want to add heat at the table, a piri-piri sauce or a malagueta-style chili sauce suits it better than Tabasco.

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Ingredients

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Beans and corn

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Dried hominy or pozole corn	300 g	With canned hominy, use 2 cans; no soaking needed
Dried white beans	150 g	Cannellini or great northern beans also work
Dried red kidney beans	100 g	With canned kidney beans, 240 g drained
Dried chickpeas	100 g	With canned chickpeas, 240 g drained

Kernel texture over sweetness

What makes cachupa itself is not the aroma of sweet corn but kernels that crumble softly when bitten. If you have dried hominy, soak it from the night before. If using canned hominy, add it for the last 40 minutes of simmering to avoid breaking it down.

2 / 3

Meat and aromatics

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Linguiça or chorizo	300 g	Coarse sausage also works. If the smokiness is weak, increase the smoked paprika
Pork belly, in a block	200 g	3 cm (1 in) cubes. If salt pork, reduce the salt
Slab bacon	100 g	1 cm (1/2 in) thick. The fat becomes the aromatic oil
Onions	2 (large)	Cut into wedges
Garlic	5 cloves	Minced
Tomatoes	3 (medium)	400 g canned chopped tomatoes also works

3 / 3

Vegetables and seasoning

Ingredient	Amount	Substitutes & notes
Cabbage	1/4 head	Roughly chopped
Sweet potato	1 (medium)	2 cm (3/4 in) cubes
Green bananas or plantains	2	If unavailable, add 1 more sweet potato
Bay leaves	3	None
Smoked paprika	2 tsp	If using regular paprika, use 2 tsp and brown the bacon more strongly
Olive oil	3 tbsp	Neutral oil also works
Salt	2 and 1/2 tsp	On days using salt pork or strong sausage, start with 2 tsp
Black pepper	1/2 tsp	You can add more at the end
Water	1.5 L to 1.8 L	Add hot water as it cooks

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An island stew rising in your kitchen

The morning after you soak dried beans, look into the bowl: the corn kernels have swelled to a size larger. Add to that the smell of a pot where pork, bacon, onion and garlic have been fried, and you can tell cachupa (Cachupa / Katchupa) is no mere bean stew. Corn kernels that stay whole, beans that melt into the broth, the smoky note of sausage added late. The longer it simmers, the closer the pot gets to an island table.

Cachupa is the signature dish of Cape Verde. Local tourism guides present it as a dish built on corn, combined with beans, vegetables, and meat or fish, and it changes by household and by island. Cachupa rica with plenty of meat, simple cachupa pobre, cachupa de atum with tuna, and cachupa guisada, the leftovers refried the next morning. The name is the same, but each pot has its own expression.

What is cachupa?

A stew of corn and beans widely known as Cape Verde's national dish. In Cape Verde, dried hominy and beans are cooked for a long time, with meat, fish, cabbage, root vegetables and green bananas added. In Cape Verdean Creole it is also written Katxupa, and in Cape Verdean households abroad it is sometimes called Munchupa.

Cape Verde's national dish cachupa, corn and bean stew served on a plate — Cachupa: beans, corn, meat and vegetables simmered together in each household's own way

The difficulty in a home kitchen is the kernels more than the seasoning. Made with sweet canned corn alone, it easily becomes "bean soup with corn" rather than cachupa. Use hominy, corn for pozole, or canned hominy if you can, so the kernels keep their chew. A combination of white beans, red beans and chickpeas is easy to source and gives the broth a natural body.

This article draws on the food culture notes of local tourism sites and home recipes from the Cape Verdean diaspora, and scales them to amounts you can finish in a home kitchen. Like Senegalese thieboudienne (in Japanese), it brings the table together in one dish, and like Brazilian feijoada, it draws out the savor of beans and meat over a long cook.

Ingredients (serves 6)

Don't substitute yellow bananas for green

Cooking green bananas and plantains are starchy like potatoes, not sweet fruit. If you can't find them, don't force in yellow bananas; make up the difference with sweet potato, potato or squash so the flavor doesn't break down.

A kitchen scene of cachupa ingredients: dried corn, several kinds of beans, sausage and vegetables — Cachupa ingredients: dried hominy, white beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, linguiça, pork belly, tomatoes, cabbage and sweet potato

Where things go wrong

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Beans are hard	Not soaked enough, old beans, or heat too low	Add 300 ml hot water and cook 20 more minutes on low. In a pressure cooker, 5 more minutes
Watery	Too much water at the start	Remove the lid and reduce over low heat for 15 minutes, mashing a few beans
Scorched bottom	Heat too high or stirring too infrequent	Move to another pot without scraping the scorch, add hot water and return to low heat
Flat aroma	Sausage's smokiness is weak	Brown the sausage separately and add 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
Too sweet	Yellow bananas went in	Next time substitute green bananas, sweet potato or potato

Cachupa is not a dish decided by strong spices. It is a dish where beans and corn are softened without hurry and the thickness of the broth is set last. Deciding the salt too early makes it salty once it reduces. Starting light and adjusting in 1/4 tsp steps at the end is the safest.

Local background and practical choices

A market scene in Cape Verde with the vegetables and beans used for cachupa — In island markets, cachupa ingredients such as tomatoes, cabbage, sweet potatoes, green bananas and dried corn are laid out

Think of rica, pobre and guisada separately

Cachupa rica is the feast version of the pot, with meat and sausage and sometimes fish. The recipe in this article is built as a rica-leaning version using pork, bacon and a linguiça-style sausage, which are easy to find. It is easier to make if you treat it not as a dish for holidays only but as a stew to make in quantity and eat several times with the family.

Cachupa pobre is a plain version with less meat, centered on beans, corn and vegetables. If you leave out the meat, increase the olive oil by 1 tbsp and brown 100 g mushrooms or 200 g squash before adding to make up for the savor and sweetness. The flavor of the beans comes forward, so keep the salt light and add chili sauce at the table.

Cachupa guisada is the way to enjoy leftovers. The next morning, spread the cachupa, with a little of the broth drained off, in a skillet and sear it over medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes. When the edges brown a little and the bottom has a fragrant crust, transfer to a plate and top with a fried egg. The corn kernels turn toasty, as if it were a different dish from the stew.

Differences between islands show in the order of priorities

Cape Verde is an island nation in the Atlantic, where corn, beans, root vegetables, seafood and a Portuguese sausage culture overlap. Tourism guides present several forms: cachupa rica, cachupa de atum, cachupa pobre and cachupa guisada. Versions with fish come naturally near the sea, and areas with plentiful produce make it with more vegetables.

For a first attempt, it is more likely to succeed if you narrow down what to protect rather than chasing every island's differences. Protect whole corn kernels, the body from the beans, a long gentle simmer and a thickness that can be pan-fried the next morning. Chorizo is fine if you have no linguiça, and sweet potato is fine for green bananas. On the other hand, avoid these three: using only sweet canned corn, adding yellow bananas, and finishing as a thin soup.

Island scenery of Cape Verde, with volcanic land and mountains — The dry island environment and volcanic soil have supported cachupa's humble food culture

Storage and reheating

Cachupa is a dish that gets better the more you make. Keep it 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator or about 3 weeks in the freezer. Let it cool before putting it in containers and portion it so meat and beans are evenly distributed. After a night in the refrigerator, the corn and beans absorb the broth, so it will be somewhat firmer the next day.

To reheat, return it to a pot with about 100 ml water or hot water and warm over low heat for 10 minutes. Microwaving alone can leave the beans hot but the center of the hominy cold. A pot is best if you have time, and a skillet if you are refrying.

For next-morning guisada, the key is not to drain too much of the broth. Fried completely dry, it crumbles. It is just right when it holds together a little when pressed with a wooden spoon but leaves no puddle in the skillet.

What to cook alongside

Githeri (in Japanese) - A humble Kenyan dish with hominy and beans. A way to use leftover cachupa beans.
Thieboudienne (in Japanese) - West Africa's national dish of rice and fish. It shares the idea of bringing the table together with one big pot.
Feijoada - A bean and meat stew from the Portuguese-speaking world. The black beans and the savor of meat come more forward than in cachupa.
Red beans and rice (in Japanese) - A New Orleans dish with kidney beans and smoked meat. Good practice for adjusting bean thickness.

FAQ

What if I can't get dried hominy?

Use canned hominy. Added at the start of simmering it breaks down easily, so add it for the last 40 minutes after the beans have softened. Sweet canned corn is light in texture and weakens the core of cachupa. If you must use it, treat it as a different dish, using low-sweetness frozen corn and more white beans.

Can I make it in a pressure cooker?

Yes. Do through step 2 in a regular pot, then put the soaked hominy, beans, 1.2 L water and bay leaves in the pressure cooker and cook at high pressure for 25 to 30 minutes with a 10-minute natural release. Then return it to a regular pot, add the vegetables and sausage, and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes. Finishing everything in the pressure cooker makes the cabbage and sweet potato fall apart easily.

Is it still cachupa without meat?

Yes. Make it as cachupa pobre, centered on beans, corn and vegetables. Because the meat's savor is gone, cook the onion well and brown mushrooms or squash before adding for satisfaction. A little olive oil drizzled over at the end brings the bean aroma together.

How spicy is it?

Many households don't make the pot itself spicy. Smoked paprika is used for aroma and color, and each person adjusts the heat with chili sauce at the table. The first time, it is easier for a family to eat if you keep the heat out of the pot and add a little piri-piri or hot sauce after plating.

What should I keep in mind if I'm saving some for cachupa guisada?

Leave a little broth. When frying in a skillet the next morning, with no broth at all it dries out and crumbles, and with too much it won't brown. Before storing, stop when the ingredients hold together moistly and a thin layer of broth remains at the bottom.

Sources consulted

Visit Cabo Verde, "Gastronomy in Cabo Verde" - Checked the place of cachupa and the breakdown of rica, pobre, de atum and guisada.
Crumb-Snatched, "Cachupa: Traditional Dish of Cape Verde" - Checked a Cape Verdean household's ingredient makeup, dried hominy, beans, meat and the long-simmer method.
Crumb-Snatched, "How to make Cachupa Guisada" - Checked how to refry leftover cachupa the next morning and the heat level.
Wikipedia, "Cachupa" - Checked the overview as a national dish, the main ingredients and the names guisada/refogada.