How to create easy Caribbean Dishes
With various easy Caribbean recipes, creating delicious dishes inspired by the islands has never been easier. Caribbean dishes are created with bold exotic flavors. Spices, seasoning, and hot sauces have changed how we’ve cooked for the last few years.
Caribbean Cuisine is a true gastronomic art. It has a whole array of food types due to culinary influences from many parts of the world, mainly African, Creole, Cajun, Amerindian, European, Latin American, Indian/South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Chinese.
The recipes are delicious, palatable, and vary in taste. Nowadays, eating healthily and following a sustainable lifestyle that fulfills your interests and needs is more important than ever. Caribbean Green Living helps you create recipes inspired by the exotic flavors of the Caribbean, organize your pantry with the right ingredients, and be a pro in the kitchen.
For this article, we will explore how to cook Haitian Caribbean cuisine.
How to create authentic Caribbean dishes
To create authentic Caribbean dishes, one must start with the right ingredients, seasonings, and spices. It is that simple!
What is the Caribbean way of living when talking about food
The Caribbean way is easy to follow:
- Have a hearty breakfast and start early. The breakfast meal might include
- oatmeal
- eggs with smoke herrings served with bread or boiled plantains
- spaghetti
- porridge
- When cooking lunch and dinner, there are a few rules to follow:
- Start with fresh ingredients.
- Always start with the marinade when cooking meat, poultry, and seafood. Know the fresh and dry seasonings and spices you want to use
- Try using vinegar or fresh lemon juice in your marinade.
- Go easy on the salt.
- Don’t forget the heat.
- Incorporate as many vegetables as you can for dinner and lunch.
- Incorporate a grain dish, rice, cornmeal, bulgur wheat, or millet.
- Potatoes are not always on the dinner table. Go with plantains, sweet potatoes (white batatas), yuca, and yam.
- Frozen snacks and desserts are a must
- Ice cream
- Fresco
- We love fruits as snacks and as part of desserts. We seldom cook with fruits. So never add fruits to your dish and categorize it as a Caribbean dish or recipe.
- We love cake: orange cake, butter cake, and rum cake.
- We are proud of our Cremas and favorite Haitian Rum, Rum Barbancourt.
- We have fun food traditions:
- Friday night is for Fritay/Fritaille.
- Saturday is Bouillon day.
- Sunday is soup joumou day for many families. Soup Joumou is the national dish for January 1st.
- We often say that we make the best rice and beans. And our other favorite rice dish is Rice with Djon Djon.
- Don’t ever forget the rice when hosting any gathering.
- We enjoy a good lasagna dish.
- We are crazy about legumes (stew).
- Lastly, we love to have fun when cooking. Many of us love listening to music while cooking.
Certain ingredients are common in most Caribbean dishes. Let’s look at how to include them in your next meal!
- Parsley and not cilantro is a must for our Epis recipe.
- Thyme is a great aromatic herb in Creole sauce.
- Green onions and chives are used interchangeably.
- Garlic is always fresh in our green seasoning mixture and perfect in white rice.
- Whole hot pepper is usually added for a subtle kick. (the pepper is not sliced or cut. It is added whole, and be careful not to burst the pepper.) You can also use NouBess Hot and Spicy Sauce as an alternative.
Cooking Caribbean Dishes is an Art
Life can be such a busy experience, and it’s easy to lose sight of what’s essential in the kitchen. Every kitchen requires organization and planning. Here are a few tips and ideas to help you with cooking and staying organized.
- Essential Tools, Pots, and Pans for most Caribbean Cuisine
- What does clean eating really mean?
- 15 Undeniable Reasons to love cooking
- The anatomy of great hot and spicy sauces and seasonings
- The best-kept secrets about cooking with Hot and Spicy Sauces.
- 20- Resources that’ll make you better at Caribbean Cuisine
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Takeaway: Cooking Caribbean dishes are easy, fun, and tasty.
Caribbean food is not hard to cook. On the contrary, it’s quite simple and can be accomplished even by a beginner cook. Just follow our Caribbean recipes, and you will soon become an expert.
There are a lot of Caribbean dishes available due to the number of islands in the region that offers different styles of local foods. There are many types of Caribbean cuisine. Caribbean cooking is Creole cuisine and has been influenced by Spanish, French, and African cooking techniques.
Caribbean dishes are among the most versatile in the world. The recipes are fresh and flavorful; many can be served for any meal. This type of food is more than just a cuisine — it’s a cultural way of life.
Happy Cooking!
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