Guyanese cuisine has many similarities to that of the rest of the Caribbean. The food is diverse and includes dishes such as curry, roti and cookup rice. The food reflects the ethnic makeup of the country.
The Africans have many unique ways of cooking, preparing and preserving food. During the slave trade the slaves brought these ways with them.
Cook-up rice is a very Afro-centric dish. This dish is very similar to the African dish known as Jollof Rice. The slaves who were brought to Guyana from West Africa used the ingriedients that were available to them and thus this very fragrant and tasty dish was created to mimic what they were used to in the Mother Land. The slave traders learned and adopted many of the African cooking techniques of the day and incorporated them into their way of cooking.
The cuisine is a very diverse mixture of Amerindian, African, East Indian, Asian and European
One of the most popular meat dishes is Pepper Pot which is an Amerindian dish that consists of several different kinds of meats, spices, and casava casreep (A type of brown preserative made primarily of casava root) , another meat dish is the garlic pork, which is served with the traditional home made bread. The recipe includes boneless pork, crushed garlic, dried thyme, chili peppers, white vinegar and sugar. The wonton soup is made of wonton skins, meat like pork or chicken (in strips), bok choy, celery, carrot or pumpkin, black pepper, chicken stock, soy sauce and vetsin. There are many desserts that include banana, like banana bread, banana fritters, banana honey pie (with crusty pastry, cornstarch, evaporated milk, honey, sugar and salt) and the banana nut loaf (with margarine, sugar, eggs, chopped peanuts, flour and mashed banana).
Here are some recipes you can make to bring a taste of Guyana into your home:
Source[]
- Guyanese Cuisine on Wikipedia -- original source of first paragraph, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License
- More Guyanese Recipes
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