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    Bacalhau à brás

    bacalhau à Brás

    Desalted salt cod shredded into slowly cooked onions, tossed with matchstick fried potatoes and bound at the last moment with barely set egg, then scattered with parsley and black olives. This is the Portuguese-born chef Jose Silva's version for SBS's Food Safari.

    Bacalhau a bras with shredded cod,thin fried potato sticks,soft egg,parsley and black olives on a white plate.
    Editorial illustration of the documented recipe; not a photograph of a kitchen-tested result.
    Servings
    4
    Preparation
    40 min
    Cooking
    30 min
    Resting
    48 h
    Total
    49 h 10
    Difficulty
    Moderate

    Equipment

    • Large container for soaking the cod
    • Mandoline; heavy frying pan; saucepan for deep-frying with a thermometer
    Servings4

    Ingredients

    • Cod

    • Potatoes

    • Onions and eggs

    Shopping list

    Method

    1. Two days ahead, soak the salt cod in plenty of cold water in the fridge for 48 hours, changing the water 3 times. Remove skin and bones and shred the flesh finely with your hands.

      Why Soaking draws the salt out; taste a flake before cooking, and soak longer if it is still very salty.

      Timer · 48 h2880:00

    2. Slice the potatoes thinly on the mandoline, then into matchsticks. Rinse in cold water and drain very well.

    3. Heat the 100 ml olive oil in the frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the onions, garlic, bay leaves and salt and cook, stirring often, until the onions just begin to caramelise.

    4. Meanwhile heat the frying oil to 200 °C and fry the potatoes in batches for about 3 minutes until golden. Drain on kitchen paper.

      Timer · 3 min3:00

    5. Whisk the eggs and yolks together.

    6. Add the cod to the onions and cook a couple of minutes, just to warm it. Remove the bay leaves. Add the potatoes, then the eggs, and take the pan off the heat at once. Fold in the parsley and white pepper. Serve scattered with olives and drizzled with a little olive oil.

      Why The eggs should set into a soft, creamy coating in the heat of the pan, not scramble into lumps.

    Substitutions

    • Salt cod → Pre-soaked, frozen bacalhau saves two days; fresh cod, salted lightly for an hour, gives a milder dish.
    • Home-fried matchstick potatoes → Good bought straw potatoes, added at the end.

    Common mistakes

    • Cooking the eggs on the heat: the dish turns dry and scrambled.
    • Not tasting the cod after soaking: salt cod varies a lot.

    Storage & reheating

    Best eaten at once; the potatoes soften. Leftovers: refrigerate within 2 hours, eat within a day, reheat until steaming hot.

    Safety

    Soak salt cod in the fridge. The eggs are only just set: people advised to avoid soft eggs should cook the mixture a little longer. Hot oil at 200 °C: keep the pan less than half full.

    Allergens

    Fish · Egg

    Check labels: stock, bacon and sauces can contain further allergens.

    Dietary

    gluten-free · dairy-free

    Cod, dried and salted

    Portugal's bacalhau is cod that has been salted and dried until it is stiff; SBS's Food Safari notes how much the Portuguese love it. À brás is one of its best-known preparations, a home and tavern dish of leftovers made good: shredded cod, fried potatoes and eggs. The name is usually linked to a cook called Brás, but we found no reliable source for that, so we do not repeat it as fact.

    [1]

    Off the heat

    Jose Silva's method has three parts made separately: long-cooked onions in olive oil, potatoes cut as thin as matchsticks and fried crisp at 200 °C, and cod shredded by hand. They meet in the pan for a moment, the eggs go in, and the pan comes off the heat, so the eggs coat everything softly.

    [1]

    How it connects

    Place

    • origin Portugal In preparation

    Potato

    Story

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