One of the dishes Northern Brazil is known for is their “Moqueca“, a delicious savory fish stew made with a local white fish, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, and coconut milk.
Several years ago a Brazilian friend of mine introduced to me a salmon version of this stew she had improvised, given that the typical Brazilian fish used for moqueca isn’t found around here.
It was so good I begged Fernanda for the recipe, which she translated into English for me. (By the way, you can’t get local salmon in Brazil, so this is really not an authentic moqueca, but a Northern California interpretation.)
What is surprising about the recipe’s method is that you simmer the stew for a good 30 minutes at least. For those of us who love fish and seafood we know that fish and long cooking times do not go well together. The exception is this stew. It requires simmering the stew well past the point of of cooking the salmon, but it works!
The result is a rich, coconut creamy, deeply flavored stew.
The salmon is marinated first with lime juice, paprika, and cumin, and then simmered with onions, tomatoes, and bell peppers, in coconut milk. The stew is even better the next day, after the flavors have had more time to meld. Enjoy!
Brazilian Salmon Stew (Moqueca) Recipe
PrintIngredients
Marinade:
- The cloves from 1/2 head of garlic, peeled, crushed, minced
- 2 Tablespoons of fresh lime juice
- 3/4 teaspoon of coarse salt
- 1 Tablespoon of sweet paprika
- 2 1/2 teaspoons of ground cumin
- 1 1/2 teaspoons of freshly ground black pepper
Other:
- 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of salmon, cut into 2-inch pieces (largish-bite sized pieces)
- Olive oil
- 2 medium onions, sliced
- 1 large green bell pepper, seeded, de-stemmed, and sliced
- 2 medium tomatoes, sliced
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
- 1 14-ounce can regular (not light) coconut milk
- 1 large bunch fresh cilantro, chopped, 1-2 cups
Method
1 Marinate salmon: Mix together the marinade ingredients. Let the salmon marinate in this paste for at least 2 hours. The longer, the better.
2 Layer ingredients in a large pot: In a large pan (large covered skillet or Dutch oven), coat the bottom of the pan with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Add a layer of sliced onions, and then a layer of sliced bell peppers, and a layer of sliced tomatoes.
Place the fish pieces, with the marinade, on top of everything, and start layering again—onions, bell peppers, and tomatoes.
3 Top with cilantro, coconut milk, olive oil: Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Add about half of your fresh cilantro to the top.
Pour coconut milk over the top. Drizzle generously with olive oil over the top (several tablespoons).
4 Simmer: Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover and let simmer for 30 minutes to an hour, until the vegetables are cooked through.
Garnish with remaining cilantro.
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
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This was AMAZING! I made it for our first Patriot’s kick off at our Marina! It was a hit! Was even better as said the next day! Next time I think I’ll use red/orange/ yellow peppers. Overall so easy and I marinated the fish for about 4 hours. So happy I found this! It’s a recipe to pass on!
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This stew is fantastic! I am unable to buy fresh cilantro where I live so I used a mixture of dried parsley and ground coriander, and it was still great. Can’t wait to try it with the cilantro as I assume it will be even better! Also I used Japanese eggplants as I don’t like bell peppers and it was delicious. I love your website, every recipe turns out great.
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I was looking for a salmon recipe that was not broiled or baked. This stew looked really interesting except my husband doesn’t like coconut. Well too bad for him and great for us because I made it and even he said it had good flavor.
I had a tail section of salmon so I added some shrimp (It was frozen and the first time I used it I didn’t care much for it so this was a good way to get rid of it.) I thought the marinade paste was thick but didn’t change a thing. I used the mandoline slicer for the onions, peppers (I used mini yellow) and tomato (roma so not to add much liquid), so it was quick. I put it on the stove. Read the recipe again and thought I saw something about saffron so I added a dash directly to the recipe.
I made a pineapple cilantro rice to serve with the dish. It paired wonderfully.
I agree with the other people who said this was restaurant quality. And it was so simple.
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Oh. My. Goodness. Absolutely delicious! Restaurant quality for a weeknight meal! Followed the recipe exactly. And did I happen to mention, the leftovers reheated beautifully! Thank you for this fabulous recipe!
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What can you use instead of coconut milk? I absolutely hate coconut, but everything else about this stew sounds amazing. What else could I use??