What Portuguese people usually have in their pantry
Whether you are in an apartment in the centre of Lisbon, a farmhouse in the Alentejo, or a family home in the Azores, when you go into a Portuguese kitchen, there’s a familiar set of ingredients that are usually sitting in the pantry and the fridge. A bottle of olive oil is a given, and so are dry bay leaves sometimes inside a jar or even hanging on the wall or the back of a door, and there’s always a can of tuna ready for when inspiration or time runs short. Ingredients such as these are often the backbone of traditional Portuguese meals, that is, the food that a typical local family would eat at home.
Cooking at home is still very much part of everyday life in Portugal. Even though dining out is quite common in urban areas and social life often revolves around cafés and tascas, most families continue to cook most of their meals at home. Traditionally, lunch was the main cooked meal of the day, which explains why even today you’ll find hearty stews or fish dishes bubbling on the stove during weekdays. Dinner might be lighter, often repurposed leftovers, a simple soup, or the classic “improvised” meal built from pantry staples. But, unlike it happens in some other countries, most Portuguese folks would still eat a hot meal in the evening too. This is, foe example, one of the key differences between Portuguese and Spanish eating habits.
Portugal’s geography explains a lot of what ends up in our kitchens. The Atlantic Ocean has guaranteed that fish is practically omnipresent in our diet, and canned fish (conservas) was a pantry staple way before they became gourmet. The countryside provides legumes, bread, and cured meats that are indispensable for one-pot meals, including Portugal’s most iconic comfort recipes.
There’s a lot in common when it comes to staple foods across Portugal, but of course that there are regional nuances too: a kitchen in the upnorth Minho will almost certainly have dense cornbread (broa de milho) on the counter, while a southern Algarve pantry might lean on almonds, figs, and carob (alfarroba). In Madeira, you’d be more likely to find sugarcane honey (mel de cana), while in the Azores, dairy products dominate. But when you zoom out, you’ll still see remarkable consistency and mostly a shared culinary DNA that crosses regions and, for the most part, even recent generations.
Foreign visitors are often surprised by how simple this pantry looks at a first glance, in spite of Portuguese cuisine being highlighted in recent years as one of the most interesting (yet still underrated) in the world. We have to be honest, we don’t use many condiments or sauces. Indeed, Portuguese home cooking instead relies on a short but powerful list of ingredients that get used again and again, but in different combinations. Some may think this is reductive, but others would actually defend that there’s great beauty in this simplicity, as with just a few pantry staples, Portuguese cooks manage to create a food repertoire that feels large and varied.
By looking at what us Portuguese usually have in our cupboards, how we shop and what we cook, you’ll get to understand more about our culture as a whole.
Feat photo by Portugal Realty
Oils, condiments and aromatics in the Portuguese pantry
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If there’s one thing you’ll learn quickly in Portugal, it’s that virtually no meal begins without olive oil. Even though butter or seed oils such as sunflower may make an appearance here and there for specific recipes, azeite is, by far, the oil that best defines Portuguese cooking. It’s not unusual for Portuguese families to have more than one kind of olive oil at home. Perhaps a more robust and peppery extra virgin olive oil from Alentejo or Trás-os-Montes for finishing dishes and salads (that is, to use raw), and a milder, sometimes cheaper bottle used for cooking. If you want to do it like the Portuguese, don’t be shy to drizzle some olive oil over your soup after it has been plated. This will amplify the flavor of the soup, while you’ll also get to make the most of the health benefits of olive oil, always best eaten raw.
Right next to the olive oil, you’ll usually find wine vinegar (vinagre de vinho). While balsamic or apple cider vinegar have become common in recent years, because they are fashionable, the Portuguese pantry remains loyal to its roots. Red wine vinegar in particular is indispensable for seasoning salads, marinating sardines or pork, or giving that sharp lift to salads with legumes (like Lisbon’s typical meia desfeita de bacalhau) or even seafood salads (like salada de polvo), like you’ll see in home kitchens all over the country.
Olives themselves are also a pantry constant. They’re served at the start of many meals in restaurants and often at home as well, if not every day, at least when you have guests over so that they can nibble on something before the main dish is served. But beyond being eaten on their own, olives are a Portuguese pantry staple mainly because of how much they are used in cooking, used to finish iconic dishes like many of the most typical Portuguese salt cod recipes, including bacalhau à Brás.
Another jar you’ll find tucked away is massa de pimentão, a thick paste made from red peppers, garlic, and salt, traditionally preserved with oil. It’s the base of countless marinades, particularly for pork, used in traditional Alentejano recipes such as the fried pork and clams dish carne de porco à alentejana.
When it comes to aromatics, onions and garlic are so omnipresent that they barely count as ingredients. Garlic is often used smashed rather than chopped or, at least, in rather thick slices, as its flavor gets mellowed by slow cooking in olive oil. Onions are the backbone of soups and stews, and when cooked down with olive oil and bay leaf, they become the holy trinity of Portuguese flavor. Speaking of which, bay leaf (louro) is the most humble yet essential herb in the Portuguese kitchen. It gets used in pots of beans, fish stews, rice, and even some meat marinades. Its fragrance is unmistakable, and most families keep a bunch of dried leaves on hand, often sourced from a neighbor’s tree rather than a supermarket shelf. To many of us, paying for louro isn’t even a thing.
Piri-piri is another common presence in the Portuguese pantry, though it’s often used at the table rather than in the pot. Whether it’s chili infused oil or more like a vinegar based hot sauce, it adds heat to grilled meats, seafood, soups, or anything that needs a little punch. Its roots trace back to Portugal’s connections with Africa, particularly the former colonies of Angola and Mozambique, and it reflects the influence of global spice routes on our daily cooking. While Portuguese food isn’t generally known for being spicy, piri-piri is proof that when we want heat, we know exactly where to find it, as is the case with Portuguese style chicken barbeque, aka frango de churrasco, globally better known as peri-peri chicken.
As you can see, Portuguese cooking doesn’t rely on dozens of spices or added flavorings. The palette may feel restrained to some, but we tend to use what we have with a certain level of skill, in order to create a consistent taste that feels like home across the entire country.
Bread, rice and potatoes in the Portuguese kitchen
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No matter what your meal of choice may be, there’s always at least one kind of starch at the Portuguese table. In fact, there are most commonly two to three: either rice or potatoes on the plate itself, and bread used as a complement, usually served on a bread basket. When it comes to carbohydrates, rice, bread, and potatoes are the three pillars that have fed generations, and their dominance is not a coincidence, but instead it’s the result of geography, agriculture, and even politics. As we all know, starches are filling, usually affordable and tasty too, making them a preferred source of calories for generations. Still today, no Portuguese person would be surprised to see two, sometimes even three, sources of carbs on the same plate.
Bread has been central to the Portuguese diet for centuries, and its various styles have a lot to do with local agriculture. In the north, after corn arrived from the Americas, broa de milho, a dense, slightly sweet cornbread, became the everyday loaf in Minho. In the Alentejo, vast wheat fields supported the large, rustic pão alentejano, typically baked in wood ovens and built to keep for several days. In Trás‑os‑Montes and central regions with poorer soils, rye (centeio) and mixed grain breads were historically more common, producing darker, heavier loaves. For much of history, bread was a staple food but also a social status symbol, with wealthier households eating wheat bread, while poorer communities relied on corn or rye. Salazar’s Estado Novo dictatorship (1933-1974) promoted wheat bread as a national standard, which sidelined the regional use of corn and rye. Only in recent decades have those older breads seen a revival, with artisanal bakeries and protected indications bringing them back to everyday tables. Thankfully, today, you could walk into any given supermarket or one of Portugal’s best sourdough bakeries, and you’ll easily come across a variety of styles, using various types of wheat, rye and corn.
As a staple, bread was never wasted. Stale loaves became bread stew (açorda), were served as the base for saucy meat dishes (like ensopado), or prepared as a kind of savory pudding or porridge along with garlic, olive oil and various ingredients to add flavor (migas). Scarcity was behind some of Portugal’s most beloved recipes, which perfectly aligned with a low waste mentality in the kitchen. If you feel inspired to try your hand at some Portuguese cooking, these are Portugal’s best recipes using old bread.
Rice has been grown in Portugal since medieval times, when Arab agricultural systems introduced irrigation in the south. But it wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries that it became a widespread staple, with large-scale cultivation in the Tejo and Sado river valleys, where waterlogged soils proved ideal. Today, Portugal still grows enough rice to cover most of its own consumption, something unusual in Europe. The most Portuguese variety is Carolino rice, which is short grain and starchy, and expands and absorbs flavors beautifully, giving us the creamy textures of preparations like tomato rice (arroz de tomate) or the much beloved seafood rice (arroz de marisco). It’s a reminder that Portuguese cooking values arroz malandrinho, that is saucy almost soupy rice, somewhere between a risotto and a stew. By contrast, Arroz Agulha (long grain) has grown in popularity only in the last half century or so, as urban families sought convenience, because Agulha cooks fast and never clumps. Most families keep at least both these types at hand, as each has its clear role, and they are important to be able to prepare several of Portugal’s best rice dishes.
The potato, in its turn, is a 16th century import from the Americas, which slowly replaced acorns and chestnuts as the main source of starch in rural diets. Its rise was tied to both necessity and versatility, as potatoes thrived in poor soils, kept well in storage, and filled stomachs cheaply. By the 19th century, they were a solid staple across the country, and they are so until today.
Portuguese supermarkets and markets typically sell potatoes by function rather than variety, unlike what you may see in other countries. Labels like batata para cozer (for boiling), batata para fritar (for frying), or batata para assar (for roasting) are more common than specific cultivar names. The logic is that a waxy potato that holds its shape is ideal for boiling and serving alongside grilled fish, while a starchier potato is better for crisping up in the oven or for making fries. Boiled potatoes are the default side dish in many homes, simply dressed with a drizzle of olive oil, but of course we also use them in stews and roasted whole, as well as fried, not just in French fries style like you’d see in fast food restaurant, but also in round cut fries (batatas fritas às rodelas), which you’d normally see accompanying a classic Portuguese steak like a bitoque.
In Portugal, potatoes often coexist with other starches. A grilled steak, for example, might be served with both fries and rice. While this “double carb” habit might seem unusual to some, it’s not unique to Portuguese cuisine. Similar combinations are found in food cultures across Latin America and parts of Asia, like India, where rice and bread, or rice and potatoes, regularly share the table. These pairings have practical roots as they make meals more filling, especially in contexts where physical labor was demanding and calories were essential. In regions like the Alentejo, where agricultural work defined daily life, combining rice, potatoes, and bread was once upon a time a necessity. Today, it’s simply satisfying and, for many Portuguese, a plate with just one starch feels somewhat incomplete.
Pasta, though not traditional, began appearing in Portuguese kitchens in the middle of the 20th century. This was encouraged by industrial food companies, marketing it as modern and practical. By the 1980s, macaroni with tomato sauce or spaghetti with ground meat had become children’s favorites, and so today pasta sits in almost every pantry. So much so that, often, it even replaces grains of rice in the traditional chicken soup canja de galinha. Pasta may not carry the cultural weight of rice, bread, or potatoes, but its adoption in dishes that feel extremely Portuguese, like fish stew with pasta (massada de peixe), shows how globalized influences have managed to penetrate our otherwise more ancient food culture. After all, culture, including food culture, is ever evolving.
Everyday proteins in Portuguese cooking
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Protein in Portuguese home cooking doesn’t always come from a big piece of meat on the plate. In fact, many of our most iconic dishes are built around modest, affordable, but very flavorful protein sources that have long been pantry staples. Beans, eggs, canned fish, and cured meats are found in almost every home, and so is dry salt cured cod, as these are all practical, versatile, and super Portuguese when it comes to flavor profiles.
Historically speaking, beans and legumes are one of the most common pantry items across Portugal. Dried beans such as butter beans (feijão manteiga), kidney beans (feijão encarnado), black-eyed peas (feijão frade), and chickpeas (grão-de-bico), were traditionally bought in bulk and cooked in large batches. Curiously, even though you do see lentils in the stores, they never became as popular here as they are for example right across the border, in Spain. Today, some families may still buy legumes dry and cook them at home but, for the sake of convenience, most of us also have them canned or jarred in the pantry, ready to make a quick bean salad or to throw in the soup for an extra boost of protein. Once upon a time, legumes were the most common daily protein for families that couldn’t afford to eat meat regularly, especially in the countryside. Which didn’t mean that little pieces of meat couldn’t be added to the recipes for flavor and extra sustenance, but animal protein just couldn’t be the main star of the dish.
Even though they remain a staple, legumes have lost some of their everyday presence in recent decades. As people became more affluent, it became more common to serve meals centred around larger pieces of meat or fish, turning beans into a side dish or leaving them out altogether. What used to be a filling stew with a few pieces of pork turned into a plate of grilled meat, rice, and fries. In some circles, this shift gave legumes a bit of a stigma, somewhat seen as poor people’s food. But, thankfully, that perception is slowly changing. With growing awareness around health, sustainability, and the rise of vegetarian and flexitarian diets, we feel that legumes are making a comeback. They are nutritionally dense, affordable, and environmentally efficient, so we’re happy to see that they’re once again earning their place at the centre of the plate.
Eggs are another protein powerhouse in the Portuguese pantry. Most families keep them not only for everyday meals such as scrambled, fried, or hard-boiled for salads, to help bread fried foods or create creaminess in anything you’d cook à Brás, but also because they are essential to our sweet traditions. While the country is known for its convent style sweets, which are usually packed with yolks, most people don’t bake those at home, at least not on a regular basis. At home, we usually stick to simpler, more practical Portuguese desserts such as our version of crème brûlée (leite creme), sweet rice pudding (arroz doce) or egg yolk flan (pudim flan), as these desserts are easy to make in large batches and are perfect to feed a crowd, for those large Sunday gatherings when you get the entire family around the table.
Canned fish (conservas) are another pillar of the Portuguese protein shelf. Unlike in many countries where canned tuna or sardines are seen as emergency food, in Portugal they’re respected ingredients, and sometimes even considered gourmet. Tuna, sardines, mackerel, horse mackerel (carapau), octopus, and even cod and eel appear in tins, often preserved in olive oil, spicy sauce, tomato or herbs. These were originally designed as wartime rations and industrial convenience during the Estado Novo dictatorship, but they became so embedded in our food habits that they never left. For many people, a quick and satisfying meal still means opening a can of tuna, tossing it with black eyes peas, onion, olive oil, a little splash of vinegar for acidity, and calling it lunch.
Cured meats, or enchidos, also play a key role in how we build flavor into meals. These aren’t pantry items in the strictest sense (as they’re usually kept refrigerated), but they’ve historically been used in small amounts to stretch flavor across many dishes. Slices of chouriço, blood sausage (morcela), alheira or the smoked flour sausage we call farinheira find their way into stews, bean pots, rice dishes, and even soups like caldo verde. Cured meats can also be eaten on their own, inside or on top of bread, but when they are not of the pre-sliced variety, which dominates the deli counter of the supermarket today, they are rather used to infuse depth into other ingredients. Culturally, this has everything to do with Portugal’s long Catholic traditions. Meat was restricted on many religious days, and pork in particular, being easily preserved after the annual pig slaughter (matança do porco), became a central protein. It could be salted, smoked, stuffed, and hung to dry, providing a year’s worth of flavoring for families who needed to make do with little. Even now, a small chunk of chouriço added to a pot of beans can transform it into something not only tasty but also unmistakably Portuguese.
No list of Portuguese pantry staples is complete without bacalhau, the dried and salted cod that has been a part of Portuguese diets for centuries. Though it isn’t fished in Portuguese waters, it became central because it could be preserved, transported, and stored for long periods, turning it into a reliable protein in a country where fresh fish was abundant on the coast but not always available inland, specially before the days of modern transportation and refrigeration. Today, many homes still keep at least one piece of dried bacalhau in the pantry, ready to be soaked and used in classics like bacalhau à Brás, bacalhau com natas, or bacalhau à Gomes de Sá. For those who can’t be bothered to soak their salt cod on a regular basis, Portuguese supermarkets also sell pre-soaked and frozen salt cod, ready to be used.
Cheese and butter: what’s always in the Portuguese fridge
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They’re not kept in the pantry, but no Portuguese fridge feels complete without at least a small block of cheese and a tub of butter. These two ingredients are used daily, for breakfast, for snacks and for finishing dishes too.
Most homes will have a basic cheese like queijo flamengo, which is a mild Edam-style cheese that often comes pre-sliced or as a small wheel. It’s normally used for sandwiches, toasties (tostas), or cubed up as a quick snack. This is sort of Portugal’s all-purpose cheese because it’s affordable, but it’s certainly not the most local in character. Alongside it, though, you might find a wedge of something with a little more personality: Azeitão, São Jorge, Serra da Estrela, or other Portuguese regional cheeses, depending on what region you’re in, what you like, or simply what you’re willing to pay for. Even if these are considered more “special occasion” cheeses today, they still show up in many homes, if not for your daily sandwich, at least to enjoy as an appetizer.
Butter is equally universal and, in Portugal, it tends to be quite heavily salted. Some families prefer the more yellowish varieties, while others go for more artisanal butters from the Azores. No matter your preference, the real debate is whether butter should be kept in the fridge or on the counter. Some insist on leaving it out for easy spreading, at least during the winter, while others won’t risk it.
Not until that long ago, no Portuguese fridge was complete without a bowl of quince paste (marmelada). It used to be homemade during autumn when marmelos were in season. Boiled with sugar and poured into clay or glass containers to firm up, marmelada was sliced and paired with cheese either inside bread or as a small dessert on its own. While that tradition has faded in cities, it’s still alive in rural areas and in homes where someone’s grandmother or aunt still makes a yearly batch. The cheese and marmelada combo might not be as common today, but it’s still considered a classic flavor pairing.
Sweet staples most Portuguese people have at home
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Portuguese desserts come in a vast number of shapes and names, but they’re almost always prepared with the same core ingredients, namely sugar, cinnamon, egg yolks, milk, and occasionally almonds or citrus zest. In many homes, even if baking isn’t a daily habit, you’ll still find the essentials in the pantry.
Sugar, of course, is the backbone of it all. But its historical weight in Portuguese cooking goes far beyond its sweetness. Portugal was one of the first European nations to produce sugar at scale, thanks to its colonial holdings in Madeira, São Tomé, and later Brazil. By the 16th century, sugar had become not only a luxury good but a political and economic force, something controlled by the elites but slowly also making its way into convents, pastry kitchens, and eventually reaching regular home cooks. By the 18th century, the doçaria conventual tradition was in full swing, and sugar had become inseparable from Portuguese dessert making, taking the place once upon a time reserved for honey.
Cinnamon, both in stick and powdered form, is perhaps the most recognizably spice used in Portuguese sweets. It’s sprinkled over rice pudding, added to leite creme, and folded into doughs and syrups for cakes and fritters. The presence of cinnamon in Portuguese kitchens goes back to the spice trade routes of the Age of Exploration. Like sugar, it was once a luxury, associated with religious festivals and special occasions. Today, it’s fully democratized, so common that many Portuguese wouldn’t think of serving rice pudding without a crisscross dusting of ground cinnamon on top, or wouldn’t dare to bite into their pastel de nata before they make it even tastier with plenty of cinnamon on top.
While sugar and cinnamon are nearly universal, other sweet pantry staples vary more by region. In the south, particularly in the Algarve and Alentejo, honey often takes the place of sugar. It’s used in traditional desserts like filhós de mel, bolo de mel do Algarve, or in everyday applications like drizzling over fresh cottage cheese (requeijão). The use of honey here connects to the region’s rural heritage and its proximity to landscapes with wildflowers. In some areas of the country, particularly inland, families still buy honey directly from beekeepers in reused glass jars, a reminder that for many Portuguese, some pantry staples still come from people they know, instead of supermarket shelves.
Dried fruits and nuts, like figs, almonds, walnuts and raisins, also tend to have a presence in Portugal’s pantry, particularly in the southern and island regions. Almonds and figs are especially important in the Algarve, where they’ve been cultivated for centuries and often appear in sweets that show clear Moorish influence, like morgados (almond and egg-yolk sweets coated in sugar) or queijinhos de figo (fig and almond bites shaped like mini cheeses). In Madeira, dried fruits and crystallized fruits show up in the dense, dark bolo de mel (a spiced molasses cake) that’s eaten throughout the year but especially around Christmas. While these ingredients may not be used daily, they’re pantry essentials because they last long.
Most Portuguese homes also keep a jar of jam or fruit preserve somewhere in the fridge or the pantry. We spread it on bread, of course, but it also doubles as a quick dessert topping, when spooned over a thick slice of cheese. Even if marmelada isn’t as common as it once was, that sweet and savory pairing lives on when using other typically Portuguese flavors like pumpkin with walnut (doce de abóbora com noz), fig, figleaf gourd (doce de gila), or even tomato.
Looking into a Portuguese pantry is one of the quickest ways to understand how people live in this country, as what we have in our pantries tends to reflect who we are. You see geography in the breads we eat, politics in the shift from rye to wheat, colonial trade routes in our sugar and cinnamon, and the persistence of rural life in the way we still stretch a single sausage across a pot of beans. You see how religion, purchasing power, migration, and globalization all contribute to shaping what ends up on the shelf and, eventually, on our plates.
If you want to learn even more, and taste some of these staple ingredients in traditional ways, join one of Taste of Lisboa’s food and cultural walks in Lisbon.
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