Pepperpot

History

Pepperpot is Guyana’s iconic Christmas dish, a stew of assorted meats (beef, pork, sometimes several kinds mixed) simmered for a long time in cassareep, a thick, dark juice extracted from bitter cassava, reduced and lightly caramelized, which gives the dish its deep color and unique flavor.

Cassareep has naturally antiseptic properties that historically allowed Amerindian populations, and later settlers, to keep the stew indefinitely at room temperature simply by reboiling it each day and adding fresh pieces of meat — a practice now replaced by refrigeration, though its memory still shapes the dish’s reputation.

Ingredients — serves 6

• 1 kg beef, cut into pieces
• 500 g pork, cut into pieces
• 200 ml cassareep
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 whole scotch bonnet pepper
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 onion, garlic, thyme

Pepperpot, step by step

1. Brown the meat pieces in a large pot.
2. Add the onion, garlic, thyme and cover with water.
3. Pour in the cassareep, add the cinnamon, whole pepper and brown sugar.
4. Let simmer covered over very low heat for at least 3 hours.
5. Remove the whole pepper before it bursts, to control the heat level.
6. Serve piping hot, traditionally with Guyanese Christmas bread.

Cooking method

Technique: very long simmering in reduced cassareep, historically reboiled daily to keep the stew without refrigeration.
Traditional equipment: a large cast-iron pot, cassareep juice made from pressed and reduced bitter cassava.
Signs it’s ready: the sauce should turn dark, thick and slightly sticky, a sign the cassareep has reduced enough.

Nutrition, per serving

Calculated from the raw ingredient quantities above, divided by six servings.

The cassareep itself deserves a caveat. Bitter cassava juice contains cyanogenic compounds that must be boiled off during the reduction process before it’s safe to use — a step done commercially or by experienced cooks, never skipped. The dark, thick cassareep sold for cooking has already gone through this process; the figures above reflect the finished, safe product.

Economic context

Guyana’s figure is one of the higher ones in this dataset for the Americas, reflecting food costs in a country that imports a significant share of its non-staple groceries. Pepperpot itself, built on cheaper cuts simmered for hours, has historically been a way to stretch a modest amount of meat across an entire holiday season.

Source: World Bank / FAO, Food Prices for Nutrition database (Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet) v4.0, 2024 data, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.57966/41AN-KY81. Retrieved 29 July 2026. This figure describes the cost of a healthy diet in Guyana generally — it is not a costing of this specific recipe.

Who this dish suits

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