Jamaica

A feast for the tastebuds, Jamaican flavours are all about bursts of fresh seasonal fruit and deep earthy spices. A warm, tropical climate, Jamaica is home to many ingredients we use in day-to-day life, including sugar, coconuts, and cocoa beans. Being an island by the sea, fish is super-popular.

Influences

One of their most famous and renowned foods is jerk cuisine. Both a cooking method and a flavour combination of sweet allspice, savoury thyme, and super-hot scotch bonnet chillies, Jerk is used to marinate meats like chicken and pork and seafood like prawns and fish. Serve with a zesty, fresh salsa of pineapple and lime.

Jammed full of flavour.

The exciting flavours of Jamaica we see today are all thanks to its rich history. The Maroons initially devised their national Jerk cuisine to conceal their whereabouts. ‘Jerking’ was a method of seasoning and cooking pork underground, so other enemy tribes could not see the smoke.

History & influences

In the 1700s, breadfruit was brought from Africa to feed the slaves cheaply and various root vegetables and other fruits. With the migration of Africans, too, came the introduction of spices and peppers to both season meat and preserve it and grains like wheat and maize to make flatbreads.

Before the Spaniards came to Jamaica, its cuisine revolved heavily around maize, potatoes, peanuts, and papaya. These ingredients are still prominent; however, Spanish, Creole, Caribbean, and African influences have brought new flavours to the region, including spices, peppers and other fruits and meat.

Jamaica

Iconic Dishes

Drag and drop block options like heading, text, buttons, dividers, and more.Encompassing the taste of the Caribbean, Jamaican cuisine is fresh, fun, and full of flavour combining punchy Jerk-marinated meats with fresh fruity salsas of local pineapple and herbs, or traditional grilled saltfish with their vibrant Ackee fruit, plump tomatoes, chillies, and fragrant spices. Locally distilled rum is served all over, and sweet treats of chewy coconut drops are enjoyed alongside Jamaica’s famous coffee.

Jamaica

Spiceology

Given the warm, tropical climate and humid atmosphere, it’s the prime growing environment for crops like peppers, thyme, chillies, allspice, and coriander. A range of peppers and chillies, all varying in spice, colour and flavour, are grown and produced and used fresh, dried, whole, and ground. Allspice berries, also known as Pimento, are harvested from the bayberry tree and harvested before ripening, then dried and used whole or ground in many dishes, including the famous Jerk marinade. As well as spices, herbs like thyme and coriander are grown region-wide, adding a fresh, floral fragrance and taste to dishes and compliments the heat of the chillies used ideally.