Guyana Pepperpot

What is it?

Pepper Pot is the National dish of Guyana. Its origin goes back to the Indian tribes who lived in the region. They were hunters and used to cook their hunted game in huge pots, made of clay and kept adding more meat or fowl, and took those big pots with them from one camp to the next. Food would be for years maybe, being cooked always, adding some more ingredients. It’s been know of one of these pots which lasted one hundred years! The requisite is to take it to a daily boiling. It doesn’t need refrigeration as long as you boil it every day. You must keep on adding casareep daily too. Casareep is a sauce made with cassava, (yucca, mandioca); it is a starchy root.

Casareep:

Grate a cassava over a kitchen towel. Turn the towel closed and press it very hard, so that the juice comes out. This juice should be taken to a boil, adding aromatics (cinnamon for instance), and burnt sugar: this way the thick syrup is obtained and the toxins are removed: the casareep is a powerful antiseptic. This preserves meats and other dishes in tropical regions. But be sure to boil it so that it gets to be very concentrated. It can be used in several other dishes.

The amount of roots to be used depends on the amount of Pepperpot you are planning to cook.

Recipe

There are several recipes of Pepperpot but we chose a simple one:

Ingredients:

3 pounds of pork, (grease out ), cut into small cubes
2 chicken breasts, cut into cubes
3 pounds of beef, cut into cubes
1 cow tail, cut between the bones,
2 red hot peppers thinly sliced
1 cow heel
Water,
Casareep…2 cups or more if needed
Basil, thyme and 2 garlic cloves
1 onion, chopped
1 pig tail (optional)

Preparation:

Cook the heel and the tail (both the cow’s and the pig’s tail) long enough so that they are rather tender. Add the rest of the ingredients, the casareep too, and add the salt and cover it. Bring this to a boil,. Then lower the fire and let it boil for two hours. This boiling should be repeated for at least 6 days, taking the whole thing to boil for at least a half an hour daily, until the meat came out completely of the bones. If you don’t wish to boil it every day, then take it to the refrigerator. But the real Pepperpot is to be left over the stove and boiled every day.