Coxinha

Coxinha is shredded chicken — most often with cream cheese — wrapped inside a dough shaped like a drumstick, breaded and fried until crisp. It's one of Brazil's most popular savoury snacks, sold everywhere from bakeries and bars to street vendors, and its teardrop, drumstick-mimicking shape is as recognisable as the flavour itself.

What it really is

Chicken simmers with onion and garlic, shreds, and mixes with a soft cheese — very often catupiry, a mild Brazilian cream cheese, though plain-chicken coxinhas exist too — before it's enclosed in a dough made from the reserved chicken broth thickened with flour, which stays pliable enough to shape by hand. Each portion of dough wraps around the filling and shapes into a teardrop that narrows to a point, mimicking a chicken leg, before it dips in egg, coats in breadcrumbs, and fries until the outside turns deep golden and crisp around the soft filling inside.

This page describes the cheese-filled version, and recipes differ: some coat the croquettes in egg, others in water or milk, and some doughs include milk.

The shape is deliberate and expected, not decorative. A coxinha that comes out round rather than tapered to a point reads as poorly made to anyone familiar with the snack — the drumstick shape is as much a part of the dish's identity as its flavour.

How it's served

• Hot, straight from the fryer, eaten by hand.
• As a snack, bar food, or party appetizer.
• Sometimes with a dab of hot sauce, though it's rarely necessary.

How to write it on the menu

• Flag the wheat, and the dairy and egg in this cheese-filled, egg-coated version; other recipes use a different filling or coating, so check yours.
• Say what the filling is, since versions with catupiry, plain chicken, or other fillings all exist.
• Note the size, since bite-sized party versions and larger snack-bar versions are both common.