Jamaican Cookery

Cornmeal porridge known in Jamaica as pap  is one of our most traditional and beloved breakfast dishes. Many Jamaicans prefer their cornmeal porridge thick rather than runny, which is why we call it pap. Traditionally, babies are introduced to cornmeal porridge from as early as six months old when they start using the cup and spoon. The porridge is boiled thick, poured into their little cups, and fed to them with a spoon. In Jamaica, we grew up believing that cornmeal porridge helps babies grow healthy and strong. But as with all foods, the health benefits depend on what you put in it especially the sweetener. Coconut milk gives the porridge a beautiful bold flavour, but did you know coconut milk was not the original ingredient? According to my great-grandmother, fresh cow’s milk was what Jamaicans used traditionally. Every morning the local cow farmer would pass through the community supplying fresh milk whether a pint or a gallon. My great-granny would scald the mil...

  👉 Jump to Recipe Backstory Growing up in Jamaica, tin beef or what many of us call bully beef was one of those meals you always knew about, but not every household could afford it as often as people think. My parents could afford it because both of them had working, middle-income jobs, but trust me, plenty households still couldn’t buy it regularly. And even if they could scrape up enough to buy one tin , that still wasn’t enough when the family big, because realistically one tin can only share for about three people the most. Back then, tin beef was cheaper, but the problem was never just the price it was the amount of people living in one home. And you would be surprised how many families in Jamaica couldn’t buy as freely as others assumed. Plus, the choices we have today never existed back then. Today you see all sorts of brands and different tin sizes small, medium, large, reduced salt, imported brands but when we were growing up, there was ...