Cook-Up Rice

Guyana's one-pot black-eyed peas and rice cooked in coconut milk with salted meat, chicken, thyme, and wiri wiri pepper, the dish of Old Year's Night

Origin: Georgetown & the Guyana Coast

From the journey of Cowpea.

Cook-up rice is Guyana's everyday one-pot dish and, on Old Year's Night, 31 December, very nearly its obligatory one: black-eyed peas and rice cooked together in coconut milk with salted beef or pig tail, chicken, thyme, and hot pepper, until the grains have taken up the liquid and the pot is dense and fragrant. It is cooked to bring luck into the new year, and Guyanese writers trace the custom to the enslaved Africans of the Dutch and British plantation colonies, who cooked black-eyed peas and rice to see the year in. The same belief attaches to the Hoppin' John of the American South. Every household has its own version, and the dish takes almost anything: the peas may be black-eyed or split peas, the meat may be salt beef, pig tail, chicken, or none, and some cooks add pumpkin or okra. What does not change is the coconut milk, which the coast supplies in abundance, and the rice, which Guyana has grown since the eighteenth century and now exports. The hot pepper is traditionally the tiny, fierce wiri wiri, or a scotch bonnet, put in whole so that it perfumes the pot without bursting.

Ingredients

Peas

  • 250 g dried black-eyed peas, soaked overnight, or two 400 g tins, drained

Meat

  • 250 g salted beef or pig tail, soaked overnight and cut into pieces (optional)
  • 500 g chicken thighs, cut into pieces and rubbed with salt, pepper, and green seasoning

Pot

  • 2 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 4 spring onions, chopped
  • 4 sprigs of thyme
  • 1 wiri wiri pepper or scotch bonnet, left whole
  • 400 g long-grain parboiled rice, rinsed
  • 400 ml coconut milk
  • 500 ml water
  • Salt and black pepper

Method

  1. If using salted meat, boil it in fresh water for 30 minutes, drain, and taste: if it is still very salty, boil it again in fresh water.
  2. Drain the soaked peas and boil them in fresh water for 30 to 40 minutes, until tender but whole. Drain.
  3. Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot and brown the chicken on all sides.
  4. Add the onion, garlic, spring onions, and thyme and cook for 3 minutes.
  5. Add the salted meat, peas, rice, coconut milk, water, and the whole pepper. Taste the liquid and season carefully, remembering the salt in the meat.
  6. Bring to the boil, then cover, lower the heat, and cook for 25 to 30 minutes, until the rice is tender and the liquid has been absorbed.
  7. Take off the heat, remove the pepper and thyme stalks, and leave covered for 10 minutes. Fork through and serve.

Notes

Green seasoning is the Guyanese and Caribbean blend of spring onions, thyme, garlic, and fresh herbs pounded or blended with a little vinegar; a few spoonfuls rubbed into the chicken are enough. For a vegetarian cook-up, leave out the meat and add cubes of pumpkin with the rice.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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