Brazil grows more kinds of fruit than almost any country on earth. The Amazon alone is home to hundreds of edible species, and most of them never leave the region.
Some, like açaí and guaraná, have become global names. Others, like cupuaçu, bacuri and pupunha, are still mostly sold from wooden stalls in Belém and Manaus.
This guide covers 14 Brazilian fruits worth knowing: what each one tastes like, how Brazilians actually eat it, and which ones you can find frozen or powdered in the United States.
Brazilian Fruits at a Glance
| Fruit | Tastes like | How Brazilians eat it | Find it in the US? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Açaí | Earthy, like blackberry and dark chocolate | Frozen bowls, juice, or savory with fish | Yes, frozen packs and powder |
| Guaraná | Mild, slightly bitter seed | Soda, powder in juice | Yes, soda and powder |
| Cupuaçu | Tangy chocolate and pineapple | Juice, mousse, ice cream | Frozen pulp, some markets |
| Maracujá | Sharp, floral, tropical | Mousse, juice, caipirinhas | Yes, fresh and frozen pulp |
| Cacau | Pulp is sweet-sour like lychee | Fresh pulp, juice, chocolate | Nibs and powder |
| Buriti | Oily, carrot-like, faintly sweet | Sweets, juice, oil | Oil only |
| Jabuticaba | Grape-like with a tart skin | Fresh off the trunk, jelly, wine | Rarely |
| Caju | Juicy, astringent, tropical | Juice, cajuína, sweets | Frozen pulp and cajuína |
| Graviola | Creamy strawberry-pineapple | Juice, ice cream | Yes, as soursop or guanábana |
| Camu-camu | Very sour, like a cranberry | Juice, powder | Yes, powder |
| Pupunha | Starchy, like sweet potato and chestnut | Boiled for breakfast, hearts of palm | Hearts of palm only |
| Pitanga | Sweet-tart with a resinous edge | Fresh, juice, jam | Backyard trees in Florida |
| Bacuri | Sweet-sour, creamy, perfumed | Ice cream, juice, sweets | Rarely |
| Cajá | Tangy mango meets apricot | Juice, ice cream, caipirinhas | Frozen pulp |
Açaí
Açaí is the small, dark purple berry of a palm tree that grows in the flooded lowlands of the Amazon. The state of Pará produces most of the world’s supply, and in Belém it is a staple, not a health food.
Locals eat it the traditional way: a thick, unsweetened purée served at room temperature with farinha (toasted cassava flour) and grilled fish or shrimp. It tastes earthy, a little like blackberries with a hint of dark chocolate.
The sweetened, frozen version came later. Açaí na tigela, blended with guaraná syrup and topped with banana and granola, took off in Rio’s beach neighborhoods before spreading around the world.
It is one of the easiest Brazilian fruits to find in the US. Frozen unsweetened packs and freeze-dried powder both work well. Our full açaí guide covers how to use them.
Try it: Frozen açaí packs on Amazon
Guaraná
Guaraná is a climbing vine native to the Amazon, cultivated for centuries by the Sateré-Mawé people near Maués in Amazonas state. The fruit is famous for its appearance: when it ripens, the red shell splits open and the black seed inside looks like an eyeball staring back at you.
The seed is what matters. Roasted and ground, it contains roughly twice as much caffeine as a coffee bean by weight, which is why guaraná powder ends up in energy drinks everywhere.
In Brazil, though, guaraná mostly means soda. Guaraná soda has a sweet, apple-like flavor with a mild kick, and Guaraná Antarctica has been the national brand since 1921. You will find it at every lunch counter, stadium and family table in the country.
Read more in our guide to what guaraná is and how to use it, or see where it ranks among Latin America’s most popular sodas.
Try it: Guaraná Antarctica on Amazon
Cupuaçu
If you only learn one new fruit from this list, make it cupuaçu (pronounced koo-poo-ah-SOO). It is a close cousin of cacao, and the large brown pods hide a creamy white pulp that tastes like a cross between chocolate, pineapple and pear, with a sharp tang.
In Belém and Manaus it is everywhere: cupuaçu juice, cupuaçu mousse, cupuaçu ice cream, and bombons filled with the pulp. The seeds can even be processed into a chocolate-like product called cupulate.
Frozen cupuaçu pulp shows up in Brazilian markets in the US, and cupuaçu butter is common in skincare. If you find the pulp, blend it with condensed milk for the simplest Brazilian dessert you will ever make.
- Tastes like: tangy white chocolate with tropical fruit
- Best as: mousse, juice, ice cream
Maracujá (Passion Fruit)
Brazil is the world’s largest producer of passion fruit, and the yellow maracujá grown there is bigger and more acidic than the purple passion fruit sold in US supermarkets.
That sourness is the point. Blended with sugar it becomes suco de maracujá, the most common juice in any Brazilian restaurant. Mixed with condensed milk and cream it becomes mousse de maracujá, one of the country’s best-loved desserts.
It also makes a superb caipirinha. Swap the lime in a classic caipirinha for passion fruit pulp and you have the caipirinha de maracujá, a favorite in beach kiosks from Bahia to Santa Catarina.
For more ideas, see our passion fruit recipes.
Try it: Passion fruit pulp on Amazon
Cacau (Cacao)
Cacao is native to the Amazon basin, and Brazil was one of the world’s largest producers before disease hit the plantations of Bahia in the 1980s. Production has recovered, and southern Bahia and Pará are again major growing regions.
Most of the world only knows the roasted bean. In Brazil, the fruit itself is eaten. The beans are covered in a sweet, slippery white pulp that tastes like lychee crossed with mango, and it is sucked straight off the seed or pressed into suco de cacau.
The beans go on to become chocolate, and Brazilian bean-to-bar makers now compete with the best in the world. Chocolate is also the base of the brigadeiro, the fudgy truffle that appears at every Brazilian birthday party.
Try it: Cacao nibs on Amazon
Buriti
Buriti is the fruit of the moriche palm, which grows in wet ground across the Amazon and the Cerrado savanna. The scaly reddish-brown skin peels back to reveal a thin layer of dense orange flesh that is more rich than sweet, with a flavor somewhere between carrot, squash and apricot.
That orange color comes from an unusually high concentration of beta-carotene, and buriti oil is prized in Brazil both for cooking and for skincare. In the northeast, the pulp is cooked down into doce de buriti, a firm sweet sold in blocks, or blended into juice and ice cream.
It rarely leaves Brazil as a fruit, but buriti oil is easy to find abroad.
- Tastes like: oily, mild, faintly sweet
- Best as: doce de buriti, juice, ice cream
Jabuticaba
Jabuticaba is the strangest-looking fruit tree in Brazil. Instead of hanging from branches, the dark purple berries sprout directly from the trunk, so a tree in full fruit looks like it has been covered in grapes.
It is native to the Atlantic forest of Minas Gerais and São Paulo rather than the Amazon, and it is deeply tied to backyard culture there. The berries spoil within days of picking, so most are eaten fresh, standing under the tree, by popping the pulp out of the tart skin.
The rest go into jelly, liqueur and a jabuticaba wine that is having a moment among Brazilian sommeliers. Read our full guide to jabuticaba for the details.
- Tastes like: muscadine grape with a tart, slightly tannic skin
- Best as: fresh, jelly, liqueur
Caju (Cashew Apple)
The cashew tree is native to northeastern Brazil, and Brazilians care far more about the fruit than the nut. What most of the world throws away, the fleshy yellow or red “apple” that the nut hangs from, is the caju, and it is one of the most popular juice fruits in the country.
Fresh caju is intensely juicy and a little astringent, leaving your mouth slightly dry the way an unripe persimmon does. Blended with sugar and water it becomes suco de caju, the flagship juice of Ceará and Piauí.
The clarified, non-alcoholic version, cajuína, is so important to Piauí that it was declared part of Brazil’s cultural heritage. The pulp also goes into doce de caju, a sticky sweet, and the nut, roasted and salted, is the castanha de caju you already know.
Try it: Cajuína on Amazon
Graviola (Soursop)
Graviola is the Brazilian name for soursop, the spiky green fruit known as guanábana across Spanish-speaking Latin America. Inside the leathery skin is a soft white flesh that tastes like a blend of strawberry, pineapple and banana with a sour finish.
The flesh is too fibrous to eat neatly, so Brazilians almost always blend it. Suco de graviola, made with milk rather than water, is thick and creamy, and graviola ice cream is a standard flavor at any sorveteria in the north and northeast.
It is one of the most widely available fruits on this list outside Brazil. Look for frozen soursop or guanábana pulp in any Latin or Asian market.
- Tastes like: creamy strawberry and pineapple
- Best as: juice with milk, ice cream
Camu-camu
Camu-camu is a small cherry-sized fruit that grows on shrubs along the riverbanks of the western Amazon, in Brazil and Peru. During the flood season the bushes stand in water and the fruit is harvested from canoes.
It is far too sour to eat plain. The claim to fame is vitamin C: camu-camu contains one of the highest concentrations of any fruit measured, many times that of an orange. Brazilians drink it as a sweetened juice or popsicle, and abroad it is sold almost entirely as a powder for smoothies.
It appears on our list of Peruvian superfoods too, since the same fruit grows on both sides of the border.
Try it: Camu-camu powder on Amazon
Pupunha (Peach Palm)
Pupunha is the fruit of the peach palm, and it breaks every rule of what a tropical fruit should be. It is not sweet, not juicy and not eaten raw. The orange, egg-sized fruits are boiled in salted water for an hour and served warm, usually at breakfast, with butter, coffee or a drizzle of honey.
The texture is starchy and dense, like a sweet potato crossed with a chestnut. In Manaus, street vendors sell bags of hot boiled pupunha from steaming pots in the morning.
The same palm gives Brazil its most sustainable hearts of palm. Palmito pupunha is now the standard palmito in Brazilian supermarkets, grilled in steaks or shaved raw into salads. The same fruit is called chontaduro in Colombia, where it is eaten with salt and honey.
- Tastes like: sweet potato and chestnut
- Best as: boiled with butter, hearts of palm
Pitanga (Surinam Cherry)
Pitanga is a small, ribbed, lantern-shaped cherry that ripens from green to orange to deep red in a matter of days. It grows wild along Brazil’s Atlantic coast and in gardens across the country, and it has escaped to South Florida, where you will find it in hedges.
The flavor is bright and unusual: sweet-tart with a resinous, almost piney note that some people love and others need time to appreciate. Fully red or almost black fruit is sweetest.
Brazilians eat it fresh by the handful, blend it into juice and ice cream, and cook it into jam. In Pernambuco, pitanga liqueur and pitanga caipirinhas are local specialties.
- Tastes like: tart cherry with a resinous edge
- Best as: fresh, juice, jam
Bacuri
Bacuri is the fruit Amazonians describe as their favorite and outsiders have rarely heard of. It is native to Pará and Maranhão, with a thick, hard brown rind that has to be cracked open to reach the small amount of white pulp inside.
That pulp is worth the effort. It is sweet, sour and intensely perfumed, and it is prized for bacuri ice cream, juice, mousse and a rich cream called creme de bacuri.
Because the trees are wild-harvested and the fruit is mostly rind, bacuri pulp is expensive even in Belém. It almost never leaves the region, so it is the one fruit on this list you may need to travel for.
- Tastes like: sweet-sour, creamy, floral
- Best as: ice cream, juice
Cajá (Yellow Mombin)
Cajá is a small yellow-orange fruit related to the mango, with a thin skin, a large fibrous seed and a tangy flavor that lands somewhere between mango and apricot. In the Amazon it is called taperebá; in the northeast, cajá.
It is rarely eaten out of hand. Instead it is one of the great juice and ice cream fruits, and cajá popsicles are a summer fixture in Fortaleza and Salvador. A caipirinha made with cajá pulp is one of the best versions of that drink you will ever try.
Frozen cajá pulp is exported to Brazilian markets in the US, usually labeled cajá or taperebá.
- Tastes like: tangy mango and apricot
- Best as: juice, popsicles, caipirinha
Where to Buy Brazilian Fruits in the US
Most Brazilian fruits spoil too fast to ship fresh, so frozen pulp is how they travel. Brazilian and Latin grocery stores stock frozen açaí, maracujá, cupuaçu, graviola, caju and cajá pulp in flat 100-gram packs meant for a single glass of juice.
Online, the easiest ones to find are açaí, guaraná, passion fruit, cacao and camu-camu, mostly as powder, soda or frozen packs. Start with our Brazilian fruit picks on Amazon.
Brazilian Drinks, Desserts and Ingredients
Once you have the fruit, see how Brazilians turn it into drinks and desserts:
- Brazilian drinks, from guaraná soda and vitaminas to caipirinhas
- Brazilian desserts, including mousse de maracujá and açaí bowls
- Brazilian ingredients to stock your pantry
- 41 best Brazilian foods for the dishes these fruits sit beside
Curious how Brazil’s fruit compares to its neighbors? We have guides to Peruvian fruits, Ecuadorian fruits and Mexican fruits as well.
More Brazilian Foods
See all →
Jorge Garcia is the founder of AmigoFoods, where he has spent over 20 years helping readers discover authentic Latin American and Spanish cuisine. Raised in a Cuban-American household, Jorge learned to cook at the hands of his mother and grandmother, carrying forward generations of family recipes. That heritage, backed by his family’s four-generation history in the Latin food industry, inspired him to launch AmigoFoods in 2003. With more than 1,000 published articles on recipes, ingredients, and food culture, Jorge’s mission is simple: make authentic Latin cooking approachable for home cooks everywhere while honoring the traditions behind every dish.