Jamaican Foods
Try Our Local Cuisines
Don’t be surprised if Jamaican foods are the best part of your trip.
The food from Jamaica is symbolic of our diversified culture. Around the world, we are known for our recipes and spices.
Eat Ackee and salt fish for breakfast or grab a patty at Tastee for lunch. When its dinner time, order stew peas and white rice with a glass of Jamaican apple juice.
Jamaican food is for everyone. We offer something for the fruit eater, the vegetarian, the meat lover, and natural juices for the health conscious.
In this section, I will give you a brief description of the Jamaican food that you can expect to eat when you are here.
- Fruits and Vegetables
- Pastry
- Main Dishes/Entree
- Snacks
- Side Dishes
- Appetizers
- Soups
- Jerk/Spicy Foods
- Dressings/Sauce
- Baked Foods
- Seasonings
Fruits and Vegetables
Jamaica has an abundance of fruits that would make any vegetarian smile.
Our fruits are simply delicious, and many visitors to the island have confessed that they went days of eating only fruits.
Jamaican fruits include jelly coconut, sugar cane,
melon, pear, banana, nasberry, soursop, ortanique, paw paw, mango, guinep, june
plum, nutmeg, coconut, Otaheite Apple, tamarind and guava.
Pastry
Not everyone likes to eat our fruits fresh from the trees. Some persons like them in the form of pastry.
Majority of our pastries are made using local fruits. I must warn you that these pastries can become addictive.
Pastries are sold in the supermarkets, roadsides and corner stores. You can buy some just about anywhere.
Look out for our cheese cake, apple pie, coconut gizzada, banana fritters, plantain tarts, grater cake, coconut drops, tamarind balls, guava cheese and marshmallows.
Main Dishes/Entree
Jerk pork is not the only local dish served at dinner time. The other main dishes are not as popular among tourist, but they are among locals.
Ackee and saltfish, seafood, stew peas, cow foot, curried goat, tripe and beans, stewed beef, stewed chicken, curried chicken, fried chicken, and baked chicken.
Snacks
Munch on a Jamaican snack while you wait in line or for your lunch. Try our banana chips and plantain chips that are made from our very own bananas and plantains.
Our banana chips are so popular that every year the export number increases significantly.
Luckily, we are producing sufficient bananas to supply the locals and visitors.
Most visitors to Jamaica always return with at least one bag of banana chips and you should too.
Side Dishes
All Jamaican meals need a good side dish. Some may even require two side dishes.
Rice and Peas is our favorite side dish. The peas are usually red peas or gungo peas.
Some persons will prefer mashed potatoes, made from our Irish potatoes, served with butter.
Other notable side dishes include festivals, bammy, fried dumplings, fried plantains, dasheen, green bananas, sweet potatoes, boiled dumplings and breadfruit.
Appetizers
Appetizers are also known as starters but be careful not to consume too many of these delicious delectable that you leave no space for the Dinner.
Crab backs, saltfish fritters, pepper shrimp and cocktail patties are popular among tourists at our local restaurants.
Other appetizers available are bacon bows, jerk sausage in bacon blanket, codfish balls, breadfruit chips, coconut chips and scotch eggs.
Soups
Saturdays are known as “soup day.” Jamaica probably has the most soup dishes in the Caribbean. We turn everything into a soup.
Soup dishes to order include fish chowder, beef soup, fish tea, Jamaican pepperpot soup, green peas soup, red peas soup, gungo peas soup, pumpkin soup, callaloo soup, cucumber soup and the famous manish water soup.
All our soups are usually made with spinners (dumplings), yam, breadfruit and dasheen.
Be careful because we like our soup HOT!!!
Jerk/Spicy Foods
It is no secret that Jamaican foods are known to be spicy. In fact, most tourists ask for jerk pork or jerk chicken than our national dish of Ackee and Saltfish.
There was once upon a time when only pork was jerked. Today, there are jerk chicken, fish, cow foot, stew peas, shrimp, goat and lobster.
We jerk everything.
Jerk food is extremely popular at after-parties and the beach.
Dressings/Salad/Sauce
We like our vegetables, with dressings and I hope you do too. An alternative to using imported dressings, we make our own using our Jamaican recipes.
Dressings that are available using Jamaican foods include mayonnaise, sauce for corned beef, salad dressings, avocado dip, tartar sauce, mustard sauce, white sauce, mango chutney and soy onion sauce.
All the dressings listed are easy to make and only take a few ingredients and a few minutes.
Try one and tell me that you don’t taste the difference?
Baked Foods
Christmas time is when we eat a lot of cake and pudding. Around Easter time, we bake a lot of buns.
You can’t have a Christmas dinner in Jamaica without a Christmas cake.
There are so many cakes to choose from that your stomach would be full just thinking about them.
Coffee cake, carrot cake, banana cake, sponge cake, pineapple upside-down cake, black forest cake, chocolate cake, sweet potato pudding, brownie, bullas, spice bun, banana bread, corn bread, and Christmas cake.
Seasonings
Jamaican food would not taste so good without our unique seasonings. A majority of our seasonings come from the ground, and was left for us by our ancestors who brought many seasonings to Jamaica.
A few of them are jerk sauce, ginger, lime, sweet pepper, wet sugar, thyme, and garlic.
Island Spice combines the spices and sells them for seasoning on chicken, fish and all purpose.
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