Jamaica Essentials

🇯🇲Jamaica

Jerk Chicken

Smoked over pimento wood on a grate across a split oil drum — the wood is what makes it jerk.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Ackee and Saltfish

The national fruit's soft yellow arils with salt cod; unripe ackee is poisonous, so timing is everything.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Curry Goat

Goat on the bone in a turmeric-yellow Jamaican curry, on the table at every wedding and funeral.

🇧🇧Barbados

Rice and Peas

Rice cooked in coconut milk with a whole scotch bonnet lifted out before it bursts.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Oxtail and Butter Beans

Oxtail

Stewed for hours with butter beans until the sauce turns sticky enough to coat the lips.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Jamaican Patty

Patty

Turmeric-yellow flaky pastry around peppered mince, and better still inside a folded coco bread.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Escovitch Fish

Whole fried fish doused hot in vinegar with onion, carrot and pepper cut into strips.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Bammy

Pressed cassava flatbread made by a Taino method older than the Spanish, soaked before frying.

🇦🇮Anguilla

Jamaican Festival

Festival

Sweet fried cornmeal fingers, the fixed thing you order alongside jerk or fried fish.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Overproof White Rum

White rum

White rum at 63%, used for drinking, cooking, ritual and rubbing on aches, in that order.

🇯🇲Blue Mountains, Jamaica

Blue Mountain Coffee

Jamaica Blue Mountain

Grown between 900 and 1,700 m under a certification mark, and mostly exported to Japan.

🇯🇲Jamaica

Pimento

Native allspice that tastes of clove, nutmeg and cinnamon at once, and the base under everything.