Caribbean recipes
Easy Caribbean Recipes to Cook at Home
Caribbean cooking draws on African, European, Indian and Indigenous traditions, and a few flavours turn up again and again: allspice, thyme, green onion, lime and the fruity heat of Scotch bonnet peppers. Our Caribbean recipes start with Jamaican favourites, from smoky, charred jerk chicken to golden beef patties, plus the sweet fried plantains that go with almost everything.
Each recipe is written for a regular home kitchen, with metric and imperial measurements and doneness temperatures. Where we simplify, we say so: the jerk chicken roasts in the oven instead of over pimento wood, the patty pastry uses butter and shortening rather than bakery suet, and habanero stands in for Scotch bonnet if you can't find it.
3 recipes · Updated
Quick answer
Savour has three Caribbean recipes. The quickest is fried sweet plantains, ready in 20 minutes with three ingredients. Jamaican beef patties take about 2 hours, including 30 minutes of chilling the pastry, and they freeze well unbaked. Jamaican jerk chicken needs at least 4 hours of marinating plus 65 minutes of prep and roasting, so start it the night before.
- Recipes
- 3
- Average total time
- 2 hrs 30 mins
- Quickest
- Fried Sweet Plantains (20 mins)
- Rated Easy
- 2 of 3
- Average calories
- 420 per serving
- Newest
- Jamaican Beef Patties
All Caribbean Recipes (3)
Frequently Asked Questions
What pantry staples do I need for Caribbean cooking?
Ground allspice, dried thyme, black pepper, curry powder, ground cinnamon and nutmeg cover the spices in our Caribbean recipes. Add fresh green onions, garlic, ginger, limes and a Scotch bonnet or habanero pepper, and you can make jerk marinade and patty filling from scratch.
What can I use instead of Scotch bonnet peppers?
Habanero peppers are the closest match, with similar heat and the same fruity flavour. For a milder dish, remove the seeds and white ribs, use half a pepper, or swap in a jalapeño or serrano. Wear gloves when cutting any hot pepper.
Which Caribbean recipe should I start with?
Start with fried sweet plantains: they take 20 minutes and need only plantains, oil and salt. Jerk chicken comes next, since most of its time is hands-off marinating. Save the beef patties for a weekend, because they have a pastry and a filling, and freeze the extras unbaked.
Where do I find plantains, and how ripe should they be?
Many large supermarkets stock plantains near the bananas, and Caribbean, Latin American, African and Asian grocers almost always have them. For fried sweet plantains, wait until the skins are mostly black and the fruit gives slightly when pressed. Green plantains are too starchy for this dish.