Traditional Guyanese Foods You Can Make at Home

One of the best ways to learn about any culture is through its food. That’s certainly true for Guyana. The country’s culturally infused cuisine is steeped in a rich history that finds favor with even the pickiest taste buds.

Keep reading — we’ve outlined five delicious Guyanese dishes (and some tasty sides) that you can create right in the comfort of your own home.

Pepperpot

Imagine a pot filled with different kinds of meat, traditional spices, seasonings and peppers all slow-cooked in cassareep — a sweet thick sauce derived from the bitter cassava root. This traditional indigenous dish boasts a distinct, mouth-watering smell of the spices intricately blended with your choice of beef, pork, lamb or even chicken.

Kalounjie (Stuffed Bitter Melon)

Popular among the Indo-Guyanese community, the melon is cut, seeded then stuffed and roasted or baked to perfection with salted fish or shrimp.

Metemgee (Metagee, Metem)

This savory one-pot dish filled with root vegetables like cassava, eddoes and sweet potatoes, and then simmered in sweet yet spicy coconut milk was passed down from Afro-Guyanese ancestors.

Cook-up Rice

A Guyanese staple, cook-up rice varies from kitchen to kitchen but almost always contains black-eyed peas, red beans and split peas combined with salted or fresh meat, coconut milk, herbs and spices.

Garlic Pork

Introduced to Guyanese cuisine by Portuguese settlers, the pork is chopped then seasoned with generous amounts of garlic, pepper and fresh or dried thyme, then set in a brine for four days or more to pickle.

For recipes on all five of these dishes check out: www.guyanatourism.com/post/traditional-guyanese-foods-to-make-at-home.