cook-up rice

Guyanese cook-up rice brings rice, peas or beans, coconut milk and seasonings together in one pot, often with meat. Althea Brown’s beef version combines chickpeas, pigeon peas, red beans and black-eyed peas. A blended green seasoning flavours the beef, with cassareep, brown sugar and dry seasonings. She recalls her father preparing cook-up on New Year’s Eve for the family to eat at midnight.^[1]

Onion and garlic are cooked before the marinated beef is browned. The legumes are added according to their cooking times, with the black-eyed peas joining later. Rice and coconut milk follow, with wiri wiri peppers, basil and thyme. The covered pot simmers until the rice is cooked.^[1]