Oil down

01 / ABOUT THE DISH

About the dish

Oil down is the national dish of Grenada, a humble dish from a humble country and a flavorful one-pot meal consisting of local vegetables, starchy tubers, green bananas, salty meat, and a blend of various seasonings. The ingredients are all combined in a big pot and cooked in coconut milk, giving the dish its name, referring to the coconut milk as it simmers and gets absorbed by all the other ingredients until only the coconut oil remains on the bottom of the pot. The preparation of this dish is important as the dish itself, because it is traditionally cooked over an open fire on the beaches where families spend their whole days and everybody pitches in to help so that a true communal feeling emerges while the dish cooks for a few hours. Both the dish and the communal party provide a nice example of the best of Caribbean culture.