Jamaica

🇯🇲Jamaica

Jerk Seasoning

Wet paste of ground pimento berries, scotch bonnet, thyme, escallion, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, rubbed into meat overnight.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Mannish Water

Goat head, tripe and feet boiled with green banana, yam, spinners, pimento and a splash of white rum, served at weddings and celebrations.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Matrimony

Star apple pulp scooped out and mixed with orange segments, condensed milk and nutmeg, served cold at Christmas.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Mauby

Antiguan Mauby

A Dominican drink of mauby bark, water, sugar, and spices, fermented slightly and served cold. A bitter-sweet, earthy, refreshing Caribbean beverage.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Naseberry

Brown-skinned fruit with grainy, malty brown flesh tasting of brown sugar and pear, eaten when it gives to a thumb.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Otaheite Apple

Deep crimson pear-shaped fruit with crisp white flesh, mildly sweet and mostly water, in season around Easter.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Overproof White Rum

White rum

Unaged Jamaican white rum bottled at 63% or higher, used for drinking, for cooking, for rituals and for rubbing on aches.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Oxtail and Butter Beans

Oxtail

Oxtail browned and stewed for hours with butter beans, pimento, thyme and scotch bonnet until it turns sticky with collagen.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Peanut Drops

A Jamaican candy of whole peanuts held together in a glassy, golden brown sugar syrup, often flavored with ginger.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Peanut Porridge

A hearty Jamaican breakfast porridge of blended raw peanuts simmered with oatmeal, condensed milk, nutmeg and cinnamon, a protein-rich street breakfast.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Pepper Shrimp

Small freshwater shrimp boiled whole in salt and scotch bonnet until they turn bright red, sold hot in paper bags by the roadside.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Pepperpot Soup

Callaloo and Indian kale boiled down with salt beef, pig's tail, okra, coconut milk and spinners into a thick dark green soup.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Pimento

Dried unripe berries of the pimento tree, native to Jamaica and named for tasting of clove, nutmeg and cinnamon at once — the base of jerk and of most Jamaican cooking.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Plantain Tart

A Jamaican sweet pastry of ripe plantain cooked with sugar and spices, enclosed in a flaky crust and baked, a rustic island dessert.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Red Peas Soup

Kidney beans cooked down with salt beef, yam, pumpkin, coco and spinners into a thick soup that eats as a full meal.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Red Stripe

Pale lager brewed in Kingston since 1928 and sold in a short, stubby brown bottle that is the brand's signature.

🇧🇧Barbados

Rice and Peas

Rice cooked in coconut milk with kidney beans or gungo peas, thyme, escallion and a whole scotch bonnet, served with every Sunday dinner.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Roast Breadfruit

Whole breadfruit roasted directly on coals or a fire until the skin is black, then peeled and sliced as a starch alongside ackee or fish.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Roots Tonic

Roots wine

Bark, roots and herbs — sarsaparilla, chainey root, strong back — boiled down with molasses into a dark bitter tonic sold from roadside stands.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Rum Punch

Rum, lime, sugar syrup, fruit juice and grenadine mixed to the old rhyme — one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Rundown

Run dun

Coconut milk boiled down until the oil separates and it 'runs down' into a curd, then cooked with salted mackerel or fresh fish, onion and pepper. Cayman Fish Rundown cooks coconut milk down with fish and ground provisions; the Jamaican canonical also carries its mackerel preparation.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Saturday Beef Soup

Saturday soup

A traditional Jamaican Saturday soup of beef, yam, coco, carrots, dumplings and spinners in a rich, seasoned broth, a weekend family staple of Taíno origin.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Scotch Bonnet

Small crumpled chilli, red or yellow, extremely hot but distinctly fruity, used whole in pots and pulled out before serving.

🇧🇸Bahamas

Sky Juice

Fresh coconut water shaken with gin, condensed milk and nutmeg, drunk from the nut or a paper cup.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Solomon Gundy

Smoked herring pounded to a paste with pimento, scotch bonnet and vinegar, sold in jars and spread on crackers.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Sorrel

Dried hibiscus calyces steeped with ginger, pimento and cloves, sweetened and often spiked with rum — drunk at Christmas.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Stamp and Go

Salt cod flaked into a spiced batter with escallion and scotch bonnet and fried into flat fritters, eaten hot as a snack.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Stew Peas

Red kidney beans stewed in coconut milk with salt beef, pig's tail and spinners — small hand-rolled flour dumplings — until thick.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Susumba

A bitter Jamaican gourd vegetable, boiled or pickled and eaten as a side or with saltfish; prized for its digestive properties.

🇲🇶Martinique

Sweet Potato Pudding

Grated sweet potato baked slowly with coconut milk, brown sugar, nutmeg and raisins into a dense dark pudding with a custardy top.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Tia Maria

Coffee liqueur made with Jamaican coffee, rum, vanilla and sugar, created on the island in the 1940s.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Ting

Carbonated grapefruit soft drink made with real juice since 1976, sharply bitter and sold in a stubby green bottle.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Toto

Small dense coconut cake sweetened with brown sugar and spiced with nutmeg and vanilla, cut into squares.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Turned Cornmeal

Turn cornmeal

A Jamaican side dish of cornmeal cooked with coconut milk, okra, scallions, thyme and Scotch bonnet pepper, similar to Italian polenta but spicier and more flavourful.