🇹🇹 Trinidad and Tobago, 🇯🇲 Jamaica, 🇩🇲 Dominica, 🇬🇩 Grenada, 🇲🇶 Martinique, and 🇬🇵 Guadeloupe · Caribbean (West African and Taino roots)

CallalooCaribbean leafy greens soup

A Caribbean dish named for its leaf vegetable (dasheen/taro, tannia or amaranth leaves), usually cooked with okra and often coconut milk, seafood or meat; a soup or stew depending on the island.

Origin and history

Callaloo is named for its leaves and is cooked across the Caribbean. The word is usually traced to Kimbundu kalulú (okra or a leaf dish) and the dish to West African cooking, adapted with local taro and Xanthosoma leaves. In Trinidad and Tobago, cooked with okra, coconut milk and crab, it became a national dish and a fixture of Sunday lunch. Dominica also counts it as a national dish.

Make it at home

Makes: 6 servings
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Hands-on: 30 min

Ingredients

Metric US

1 bundle (about 500 g)1 bundle (about 1 lb) young dasheen bush (taro leaves), or callaloo bush, stems and central vein peeled off, leaves and tender stems chopped
8 (about 200 g)8 (about 7 oz) ochroes (okra), tops trimmed, cut in rounds
250 g9 oz (about 2 cups) West Indian pumpkin (calabaza) or butternut squash, peeled, in small cubes
1 onion, chopped
4–6 cloves garlic, chopped
3 chives (scallions), chopped
3 pimento peppers (seasoning peppers, mild), seeded, chopped
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 tbsp vegetable oil or butter
800 ml3 1/3 cups coconut milk, freshly squeezed from grated coconut, or canned
500 ml2 cups water
2–3 (about 600 g)2–3 (about 1.3 lb) blue crabs (or other hard-shell crabs), cleaned, split in half; optionally rubbed with green seasoning
1 Scotch bonnet pepper (or other hot pepper), left whole, unbroken
salt and black pepper, to taste

Method

1. Wash the dasheen leaves well. Strip the thin skin off the stems and the central vein (it can make the throat itch if left), then chop leaves and stems.
2. Heat the oil in a large heavy pot over medium heat and soften the onion, garlic, chives and pimento peppers for 3–4 minutes.
3. Add the dasheen leaves in handfuls, stirring until they wilt down.
4. Add the pumpkin, ochroes and thyme, then pour in the coconut milk and water and bring to the boil.
5. Lay the whole Scotch bonnet on top, season lightly with salt and pepper, cover and lower the heat to a gentle simmer.
6. Cook for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes and scraping the bottom so it does not catch; lower the heat if it sticks.
7. Add the crab pieces, cover again and simmer for 15–20 minutes more, until the crab shells are bright orange and the leaves and pumpkin are completely soft.
8. Lift out the hot pepper carefully without bursting it, and lift out the crab pieces.
9. Swizzle the callaloo with a swizzle stick (dhal ghotni) or a whisk until it is smooth and thick, or pulse briefly with an immersion blender; long blending makes it foamy.
10. Return the crab, taste for salt, and simmer for 2 minutes; serve hot in bowls or over rice, with the crab in the pot.

Notes

The recipe is the Trinidad and Tobago crab and callaloo, the island's best-known form and a fixture of Sunday lunch, where it sits beside rice, macaroni pie, stewed chicken and fried plantain.
Salted pigtail or salted beef is a common alternative or addition to crab: soak it to remove excess salt, boil until tender and add it with the coconut milk. Meatless callaloo is common too.
Many Trinidadian cooks consider pumpkin essential for colour and body; others leave it out. Some cooks swizzle it smooth, others leave it chunky.
Grenada and Dominica cook callaloo with dasheen leaves and coconut milk as well, and in Grenada it also goes into the national dish, oil down. In Martinique and Guadeloupe, calalou au crabe is a traditional Easter dish. Jamaican callaloo is a different preparation: amaranth leaves steamed as a side dish, often with saltfish.
Outside the Caribbean, dasheen leaves are sold in Asian, African and Caribbean shops as taro leaves. Baby spinach is the usual substitute: the callaloo is milder and less velvety and needs only 15–20 minutes of cooking before the crab goes in.
It keeps 2 days in the refrigerator and freezes well without the crab; reheat gently with a splash of water.

Adapted from Discover Trinidad & Tobago: How to make callaloo, Chris De La Rosa, Caribbean Pot: Callaloo, the true spirit of the islands, and Trinidad Express: Independence food (callaloo).