Bacalhau à Brás: Portugal's Golden Salt Cod with Eggs and Potato

A dish that waits for the moment the egg just barely sets

The sound of cutting potatoes thin gets finer on the board bit by bit. Slowly cook onions in olive oil and a sweet aroma rises in the kitchen. Then shred in desalted salt cod, and the smell of dried sea, unlike grilled or simmered fish, returns in a breath.

Bacalhau à Brás (Bacalhau a Bras) is, among Portugal's salt cod dishes, one that is easy to recreate in a home kitchen. Desalted salt cod, matchstick potatoes, onion, eggs. The ingredients look plain, but depending on where you stop the egg at the end, it becomes a restaurant flavor or a hard scramble.

If Caldo Verde (in Japanese) is the soup that warms a cold Portuguese night, bacalhau à Brás is a dish you set in the middle of the table and pick at with bread, salad and white wine. Though it shares the egg-and-potato pairing of Spain's Tortilla Española, the savor of salt cod and the saltiness of olives bring it much closer to Lisbon. On a day you want to try the aroma of Portugal with meat rather than fish, moving on to Piri-Piri Chicken, grilled with chili and lemon, gives a completely different energy at the same country's table.

What is bacalhau à Brás?

Bacalhau (bacalhau) is the Portuguese word for dried cod, especially salted and dried cod. In Portuguese home cooking, bacalhau is not an ingredient only for special days. It is desalted and then boiled, grilled, fried or combined with egg. It is an ingredient that crossed the sea as preserved food and took root in home kitchens.

Bacalhau à Brás is a dish in which that salt cod is shredded fine, sautéed with onion, and bound with fried matchstick potatoes and egg. It is finished with black olives and parsley. It is yellow to look at, with white salt cod and black olives showing here and there, so it is plain yet brightens the plate. It is an unpretentious feast that might come out at a Portuguese tasca, a neighborhood eatery.

It is easy to confuse with similar dishes, so setting out the differences first makes it easier to cook.

Portugal's salt cod culture is a food culture where northern fish, Portuguese salt and seafaring preservation technology came together. Cod caught in northern seas is preserved in salt to make it into a form that can be carried far. In kitchens in Lisbon and Porto, that ingredient met olive oil, egg and potatoes. The reason it has depth without flashy spices is that the salt cod itself has strong savor.

Ingredients (serves 4) and substitutes

Real salted dried cod is best if you can get it, but many supermarkets outside Portugal rarely stock it. Looking in import food shops, Portuguese food retailers online, or the dried-seafood section of large stores is realistic. If it is hard, use lightly salted cod, salt cod, frozen cod or canned cod to bring it to a home version.

The biggest fork when buying bacalhau is "already desalted, or dried and salted." The dried type is soaked in water for roughly 12 to 36 hours depending on thickness, with the water changed several times. In a home kitchen, first tear off a small piece after 12 hours and taste. If it is a little milder than salted salmon, it can be used. Completely unsalting it blurs the whole dish.

For potatoes, Portugal often uses fine fried potatoes called batata palha. Elsewhere you can either cut potatoes into matchsticks yourself and shallow-fry them, or use store-bought matchstick potatoes. On busy days a store-bought one is fine. But the flavored snack type is too salty, and the egg loses.

Salt cod, matchstick potatoes and olive oil are the foundation of the flavor. If you can find desalted fish and store-bought batata palha, you can concentrate on cooking the egg.

How to make it: stop the egg with residual heat

Bacalhau à Brás is decided in the last 3 minutes. Prepare all the ingredients before lighting the fire. If you go looking for the parsley after the eggs are in, the eggs will set in the meantime. Looking at it in the order of desalting, potatoes, onion and egg leaves few places to panic.

Just as with Paella Valenciana (in Japanese) from Spain, touching the rice or eggs too much destroys the texture. Fold few times and finish after turning off the heat. This restraint is the shortcut to a soft bacalhau à Brás.

Causes of hard eggs, saltiness and sogginess

With few ingredients, the causes of failure are clear. Just reviewing these three, egg, salt and potatoes, brings you much closer to the restaurant flavor.

When making it with lightly salted cod, you don't get the dried savor of bacalhau. Instead, the flesh is soft and settles easily at the table. If making it with fresh cod, sprinkling a thin 1/2 tsp salt over the whole fish the night before and refrigerating it to draw out water gives a firmer texture a little closer to salt cod.

When using store-bought matchstick potatoes, always check whether they are salted. If they are very salty, raise the eggs to 6 or add a little boiled potato to dilute the density. As with watching the stickiness of rice and turning off the heat in the basics of risotto (in Japanese), put the state of the pan before the minutes in the recipe at the end.

Background of the dish: Lisbon taverns and salt cod culture

Following Portuguese cooking, you keep coming back to salt cod. Why salt cod, rather than fresh fish, in a country of the sea? The answer is preservation and sailing. Cod caught in distant seas, salted and dried, can be carried on long voyages and to inland towns. In the days before refrigerators, salt cod was a kitchen's insurance.

The origin of bacalhau à Brás is told in connection with taverns around the Bairro Alto in Lisbon. A well-known theory is that a man named Brás or Braz served a dish combining salt cod, matchstick potatoes and egg. The exact records waver, but the rationality of a tavern dish remains on the plate. Salty fish, cheap potatoes, eggs, olive oil. It can be served within a short time after the order, and goes with both wine and bread.

This sense of "bringing leftovers back to the center of the plate" is shared by European home cooking. Belgium's Carbonnade stews beef in beer, France's Pot-au-Feu (in Japanese) shares meat and vegetables from a big pot, and the fish-and-potato Plokkfiskur mashes fish and potatoes into a warm whole. All are the wisdom of eating up well what can be preserved, rather than lavish ingredients.

Bacalhau à Brás eaten locally is a dish at a distance close enough to appear at a home dinner and at a tasca lunch. It is heaped on a white plate, black olives sit like dots, and a lettuce and tomato salad is placed alongside. Depending on the place, the potatoes are finished lightly with thin store-bought ones, and at home, yesterday's bacalhau is sometimes shredded in. It is as everyday as scrambling leftover grilled fish with egg, but with salt cod and olive oil going in, the air of the table opens a little outward.

What makes bacalhau à Brás convenient on a Portuguese table is that it sits on the border between main and side. It is not as heavy as a meat dish. A salad alone is not enough. The egg and potatoes give staying power. So it can be served at both lunch and dinner. Unlike a cold vegetable dish like Gazpacho or a stew like Cocido Madrileño (in Japanese), it has the lightness of heading straight to the table with one skillet.

To lean toward the local version elsewhere, protect not the fish itself but the "dried savor," the "fine potatoes" and the "stopping point of the egg." Even with lightly salted cod, if you sprinkle a little salt the night before and draw out the water, you get a firmer flavor than plain sautéed white fish. If you cut the potatoes thick, you get a fullness closer to the Spanish tortilla. The finer you cut them, the more they slip between the salt cod and egg, bringing the lightness of a Portuguese tavern dish.

Storage and building a menu

It is best freshly made, but leftovers are guided to be eaten by the next day refrigerated. Because it contains egg, avoid leaving it at room temperature. When the heat has gone off, move it to a shallow container and refrigerate. To reheat, a skillet is better than a microwave. Add 1 tsp olive oil and warm gently over low heat, and the egg is less likely to harden.

We do not recommend freezing. The egg turns crumbly and the potatoes watery. If you must make ahead, refrigerate up to the point where the onion and salt cod are sautéed, and combine the potatoes and egg right before eating. At this stage the flavor keeps well even the next day, and the fish and onion actually meld.

For a menu, adding a little bitterness and acidity rounds it out. Arugula, lettuce, cucumber and onion dressed with olive oil and vinegar are enough. A hard baguette or country loaf goes well with it. For a Nordic-leaning enjoyment, rye bread like that of Smørrebrød is interesting too. A gentle combination of fish and potatoes shows better as the star with a light salad than placed before or after a rich dish such as Greece's Moussaka (in Japanese) or Sweden's Köttbullar.

Build the table not by the number of people but by "how much energy you have to make anything else." Bacalhau à Brás itself contains egg, fish and potatoes, so the tip is not to make the other dish too heavy.

Frequently asked questions

What can I use if I have no salt cod?

The easiest to use is lightly salted cod. Remove the bones, lightly grill or boil it, then shred. If using fresh cod, sprinkle a thin layer of salt the night before and refrigerate it to draw out excess water. You can also make it with canned tuna, but it lacks the fibrous texture and aroma of salt cod, so it is more natural to think of it as a different egg-and-potato dish.

How many hours of desalting are needed?

For thick dried bacalhau, 24 to 36 hours, and for thin fillets 12 to 24 hours is the guide. Change the water at least twice. But products vary greatly, so in the end tear off a small piece and taste. A little milder than salted salmon is easiest to use.

Can I make it with store-bought french fries or potato sticks?

Frozen shoestring potatoes can be used. Fry them in oil or lightly bake them in the oven before adding. Snack-type potato sticks have strong flavorings and salt, and hide the taste of the egg and salt cod, so they are not suitable. If you really use them, add no salt at all and dilute with more egg.

Is it safe to leave the egg soft?

If you are concerned about handling eggs, cook until moist and just set rather than soft. When serving small children, older people, pregnant women or people with weakened immunity, it is safer to cook it thoroughly through. The texture changes a little, but you can make up the aroma with parsley and olive oil.

What drinks go with it?

A light white wine, vinho verde, sparkling water, or water with lemon goes well. Egg and potato round out the mouth, so a drink with acidity makes it easier to keep eating. On days without alcohol, just squeezing lemon into unsweetened sparkling water is enough.

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