Cachupa

History

Cachupa, a slow-cooked stew of cracked corn and beans enriched with various meats or fish depending on a household’s means, is the national dish of the Cape Verde archipelago, born from the need to feed an island population facing an arid climate and unpredictable harvests. Its simplest version, cachupa pobre (“poor” cachupa), contains only vegetables.

Traditionally prepared the day before to simmer all night, cachupa improves even further the next morning, reheated and sometimes turned into cachupa refogada, a pan-fried version that recycles leftovers. It remains a powerful identity marker for the Cape Verdean diaspora scattered across the world.

Ingredients — serves 8

• 500 g cracked corn
• 300 g beans (white or red)
• 300 g pork (or dried beef)
• 200 g chorizo or linguiça sausage
• 2 onions
• 1 green cabbage
• 2 sweet potatoes
• Oil, salt, bay leaf

Cachupa, step by step

1. Soak the cracked corn and the beans separately in cold water overnight.
2. Sauté the minced onions in oil until translucent.
3. Add the pork and chorizo cut into pieces, and let them brown lightly.
4. Stir in the drained corn and beans, cover generously with water, add the bay leaf, then simmer on very low heat for 2 to 3 hours.
5. Add the cabbage and sweet potatoes cut into pieces about 30 minutes before the end of cooking.
6. Adjust the seasoning with salt and let rest before serving — cachupa is better made the day before.

Cooking method

Technique: an extremely long simmer on very low heat, which lets the cracked corn become completely tender while absorbing the juices from the smoked meats.

Traditional equipment: a large black cast-iron pot, often left overnight over dying embers.

Signs it’s ready: the corn should be fully tender and slightly burst, and the sauce should coat generously without being watery.

Two versions, one dish

Cachupa exists in two recognised forms, and the gap between them is a fair way to understand the dish. Cachupa rica (“rich” cachupa) is the version above, built with pork, sausage and enough meat to make it a substantial main course. Cachupa pobre (“poor” cachupa) strips that back to corn, beans and vegetables alone — no meat at all — and is closer to the dish’s original, subsistence-driven form than the festive version most visitors encounter. For a reader used to a hearty corn-and-bean stew like Brazilian feijoada or a New World succotash, cachupa’s basic shape — starchy corn, legumes, and whatever protein is on hand, simmered for hours — will feel familiar even before the specifically Cape Verdean seasoning is added.

Nutrition, per serving

Calculated from the raw ingredient quantities above, divided across eight servings.

The figures above are for cachupa rica, with pork and sausage included; the cachupa pobre version, without meat, drops well below these numbers in fat and calories while keeping most of the fibre — 13 g per serving here comes overwhelmingly from the corn and beans, not the meat.

Economic context

Cachupa’s design answers an arid, harvest-uncertain island economy directly: cracked corn and dried beans both keep for months without refrigeration, a genuine advantage on an archipelago where fresh produce can be scarce between harvests. That the dish improves — rather than merely survives — a night simmering and a reheating the next day is less culinary preference than a practical response to the same scarcity that shaped its ingredient list in the first place.

Source: World Bank / FAO, Food Prices for Nutrition database (Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet) v4.0, 2024 data, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.57966/41AN-KY81. Retrieved 29 July 2026. This figure describes the cost of a healthy diet in Cape Verde generally — it is not a costing of this specific recipe.

Who this dish suits

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