Taste Haiti
Ayiti
The western third of Hispaniola and the world's first Black republic, with a Creole kitchen of fried pork, hot pickles, red rice and a soup that celebrates freedom.
Haitian food is seasoned with epis, a green blend of garlic, spring onion, parsley, thyme, pepper and chilli that goes into nearly every marinade. Pork is braised and fried for griot, goat for tasso, and both are eaten with pikliz, a pickled cabbage hot enough to make a point. Rice is cooked with red beans or with djon djon, black mushrooms that turn it dark. Fried plantain is pressed flat, legumes are stewed with vegetables, and on 1 January every household makes soup joumou. Sweets include dous makòs fudge and pain patate, sweet potato pudding.
4 recipes · 1 cuisine
All dishes 4
- 10 hr 25 min
Griot
Griyo
Haitian pork shoulder marinated in sour orange, scotch bonnet and epis, braised until tender, then fried until the edges shatter.
MediumMedium heat
- 4 hr 30 min
Soup joumou
Haiti's independence soup: a smooth pumpkin broth with beef, pasta, potato, carrot, cabbage and a whole scotch bonnet, eaten every 1 January.
Medium
- 24 hr 20 min
Pikliz
Haitian pickled cabbage, carrot and scotch bonnet in vinegar and lime — the sharp, very hot relish that goes on griot and everything fried.
Very easyExtra hot
- 9 hr 50 min
Diri kole ak pwa
Haitian rice and red beans cooked together in the bean liquid with coconut milk, thyme, cloves and a whole scotch bonnet.
Easy
Regional cuisines
Think you know Haiti food?
4 quiz dishes. Optional — Passport stamps still come from cooking.
Take the Haiti food quizFood history
French planters built the richest colony in the Caribbean on enslaved African labour. The cuisine that emerged is African in its stews, rice and bean dishes and fried foods, French in its technique and some of its names, and Taíno and Spanish in its roots and citrus marinades. The revolution of 1791 to 1804 gave the kitchen its most political dish, soup joumou, once forbidden to the enslaved. Isolation and poverty kept Haitian cooking distinct; the diaspora in Miami, Montreal and New York keeps it visible.
Common ingredients
Techniques
- epis marinade
- braise-then-fry
- vinegar pickling
- rice in bean liquid
- puréed squash broths
- citrus washing of meat