The vegetables on a Brazilian churrasco table are there to cut fat and salt. The grate gets meat, fresh garlic pork sausage (linguiça toscana), and sometimes cheese. Vegetables go on the fire only in a few specific ways.
Vinagrete
Vinagrete is the main vegetable dish at a churrasco: chopped tomato, onion, and usually pepper, in oil, vinegar, and salt. A usual bowl is 3 tomatoes, 1 onion, 1 pepper, 4 tablespoons oil, 2 to 4 tablespoons vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt (1 colher de chá), and parsley and green onion (cheiro-verde). Let it sit 30 minutes. That recipe has its own post.
A plain salad sits next to it: lettuce, tomato, onion, dressed at the table with oil, vinegar, and salt. No creamy dressing, no croutons, no cheese.
Sul
The gaúcho vegetable on the fire is the xixo. On a long skewer, chunks of beef, pork, or chicken are stacked with pieces of onion, tomato, and green or red pepper, all of it salted with coarse salt (sal grosso) only. The vegetables cook in the meat fat and pick up salt. They cook with the meat, not as a separate vegetable skewer.
For a home kettle grill, cut 1 large onion, 2 tomatoes, and 1 green pepper into 1 1/2-inch pieces. Alternate them with 1-inch cubes of meat on a long flat skewer. Salt the whole skewer just before the fire. Cook over embers, turning, until the meat is done and the onion is soft and browned at the edges, usually 15 to 25 minutes.
With young chicken (galeto), a Cornish hen or small air-chilled bird, the Serra Gaúcha plate adds the same plain salad and often maionese, which is a potato salad, not a vegetable. The bowl is here: potato salad (maionese de batata). German-settled towns sometimes put out a warm potato salad without mayonnaise.
The Serra Gaúcha green is radicci, also called almeirão (Italian dandelion, catalogna, or escarole), wilted with hot bacon. The bowl is here: radicci with bacon (radicci ao bacon).
Nordeste
A home version: 3 ripe tomatoes, 1 medium red onion, 1/2 cup chopped parsley and green onion, 4 tablespoons vinegar, 3 tablespoons oil, and 1 teaspoon (1 colher de chá) salt. Chill 15 minutes. Pepper is optional here. The herb is not. Some northeastern pots use cilantro (coentro) with the green onion instead of parsley.
Cucumber salad is the other raw plate in the heat: 2 cucumbers, sliced thin, 1/2 small onion, 2 tablespoons vinegar, 1 tablespoon oil, 1/2 teaspoon (1/2 colher de chá) salt. It is a lunch salad that belongs next to sun-dried salted beef (carne de sol) and plantain (banana-da-terra).
Cassava (macaxeira) and plantain (banana-da-terra) are the northeastern starches, not vegetables in the US sense. Frozen yuca in the Latin freezer and yellow or black-ripe plantains at any supermarket are the US buys. Jerimum (pumpkin) and quiabo (okra) are northeastern food. They are everyday pots more than churrasco sides, so they are not required on this fire.
Couve refogada is the feijoada green, not the churrasco green.
Next cooks
Region: Across Brazil.
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