Why I love Jamaican Cuisine

Jamaican cuisine was brought about by the island's early settlers. There are a lot of items and recipes that were generated by the Arawaks, the British, the Spanish, the Africans (who were brought to Jamaica as slaves), the Indians, Jews, Chinese and other Caribbean islanders amongst settlers.These simple gourmet recipes were prepared using various cooking styles known only to them and was adopted by generations following them. Most, if not all, meals were cooked on an old-time coal stove and baked products were produced in a brick oven. Modern upgrades and cooking videos methods have now been applied and that does not change the way we prepare our meals or it alters the taste in any evident way. Let me give you some insight as to where our Jamaican cuisine is coming from.

History Behind The Food

Long before the brick oven and the coal stove though there was a piece of apparatus called the "barbacoa" which was a wooden grate that stood on four forked sticks placed over a slow fire. This was what the Arawak Indians used to spit-roast fish and meats. This was the barbeque grill their time. The process is now perfected and the cured or cooked meat is what we now know today as the famous "jerk". Here are some easy cooking videos to guide you up.

Our motto is "Out of Many One People" but I would want to say that the Arawaks had something to do with the influence of the motto. My reason for saying this is because they also brought a stock pot in which meat, fish and vegetables were cooked together for what we know today as "soup". That is why I would want to say that the Arawaks had it as "Out of Many One Pot."

They also brought with them corn, sweet potatoes, callaloo, beans, guavas, pineapples, papayas (or most commonly known as pawpaw), fish, conies, iguanas, crabs and cassava (which they used to make bread). So their contribution to the ingredients we now use in our Jamaican cuisine is invaluable. Now the Spanish came to Jamaica in the year 1494 and it was some 150 years after they came they brought with them additional food items such as cattle, pigs, goats, horses and lard from animal fat. They were also great contributors of trees and fruits such as the Seville and Valencia oranges, lime, lemon, tamarind, ginger, pomegranate, date palm, plantain, coconuts, grapes, figs, sugar and bananas. These items added another wide variety to our cuisine and popular dishes such as escoveitched fish and peas and bean dishes were originated in Spain.