Vegetables and starches Vegetables that are popular in Portuguese cookery include numerous cabbage and collard varieties, sprouts (traditionally collected from turnips and different cabbage shoots) tomatoes, onions and peas.
Portuguese soups people eat at home
Sopa de legumes, a general Portuguese term that refers to vegetable soups, is the most common of them all. The base tends to be blended potatoes or zucchini, onions, garlic and carrots, with added leafy greens such as turnip greens, spinach, and watercress, amongst others.
Some of the most famous Portuguese dishes include piri piri chicken, francesinha, bacalhau, and pastel de nata. Portugal is also quite famous for its wines.
Pastel de nata
It's probably Portugal's most famous food, and there's a good reason for that. Pastéis de nata (or Portuguese custard tarts as they're known outside of Portugal) are just delicious.
Many of the ingredients used in Portuguese dishes are healthy foods (fish, vegetables, fruits, herbs, grains, etc.), however, many of those healthy ingredients end up being fried rather than roasted or baked — plus, the Portuguese love a healthy dousing of olive oil!
The most common items you'll find in a Portuguese breakfast are: bread, sliced cheese, sliced ham, bread, jam, and a milky coffee. Sometimes it's just toast without the ham and cheese, but the common denominators are almost always bread and a milky coffee like a galão or a meia de leite.
Portuguese dishes include meats (pork, beef, poultry mainly also game and others), seafood (fish, crustaceans such as lobster, crab, shrimps, prawns, octopus, and molluscs such as scallops, clams and barnacles), vegetables and legumes and desserts (cakes being the most numerous).
Typical Lunch in Portugal (12 p.m. to 2 p.m.)
These menus usually include a soup, prato do dia (dish of the day), dessert, and a coffee. If they're really in a rush, they'll order something quick at the counter like a soup and a bifana (pork sandwich).
Bacalhau – Salted and Dried Codfish
Bacalhau in the market in Portugal. Considered the national dish of Portugal, Portugal's culinary repertoire boasts more than a thousand bacalhau recipes! You will fall in love with salted cod because of the delicious flavour it develops due to the salting and drying process.
Conventional Portuguese Vegetables
Fava beans, red beans, white beans, black eyed beans, pumpkins, collards, kale, potatoes, onions, carrots, etc are all grown far and wide in Portugal.
Portuguese food is Mediterranean cuisine at its best, and like the people, it's warm, vibrant, spicy, and a little mysterious. It's also balanced, as the people's diet is filled with fruits, vegetables, fresh seafood, meat, and plenty of sweets.
Licor Beirão
Simply known as Beirão, this national drink of Portugal is one you don't want to miss! Possibly the most popular Portuguese liqueur on the market, this drink originated in the Beiras region and is an excellent option for those with a sweet tooth.
We have a special name for leafy green vegetables in Portuguese: verduras, sometimes called hortaliças. These include lettuce, collard greens, arugula, and others.
In Portugal, salad is usually a side dish and it changes slightly from north to south, coast to inland so when you come you can just explore them all, one restaurant at a time.
#9 Bedtime
Even small kids go to bed the earliest around 9 PM because Portuguese usually have dinner around 8 PM or later. In Poland, bedtime is around 7–8 PM. People there start work at 8 AM and breakfast is a substantial meal so usually they get up around 6.30 AM.
Walking around Lisbon, particularly in the city centre and touristic areas, you'll see cafés advertising full cooked breakfast options, featuring pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausages and more.
In Portugal, restaurants open for lunch starting at 12:00 p.m. or 12:30 p.m. but don't usually fill up until around 1:00 p.m. Dinner is most commonly taken at 9:00 p.m. or 9:30 p.m., but restaurants do open as early as 7:00 p.m.
Starting with food, it is true that the Portuguese eat a lot of rice, so much so that the country ranks #1 in Europe for rice consumption!
The top ranked country, China, accounted for 47.3 % of vegetable consumption in the world.
Chad has the lowest vegetable consumption per capita. Consumption of animal products in the EAT-Lancet diet. 249.8 Kg Per Capita. 257.0 Kg Per Capita.
Most consumed type of yogurt in Portugal 2022
In 2022, flavored yogurt was the most popular type of yogurt in Portugal, consumed by over 92 percent of the respondents. Natural yogurt came in second with about 47 percent, followed by sugar free yogurt which was consumed by 14 percent of the respondents.
Then, these are the options: pingado (an espresso shot with a few drops of milk); garoto (just a little bit of coffee with some milk in a small espresso cup); meia de leite (half milk and half coffee served in a large cup); and galão (essentially the same measures as a galão but served in a tall glass).