Simmer chicken and sweet potatoes in a fiery, aromatic broth packed with vegetables until tender. Stir in coconut milk and shrimp for a rich, hearty stew that pulls inspiration from the classic Jamaican Pepper Pot stew.
| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 55 min |
| Prep: | 15 min |
| Cook: | 40 min |
| Yield: | 4 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 4 skinless, bone-in chicken thighs (about 1 pound)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to season chicken
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1 medium onion, halved and sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/2 cup canned chopped tomatoes
- 4 cups chicken broth, low-sodium canned or homemade
- 1 bunch kale (about 1/2 pound), stemmed, leaves chopped
- 2 thick sweet potatoes (about 1 pound), halved lengthwise and sliced into 3/4-inch half-moons
- 4 ounces fresh okra, trimmed, halved lengthwise
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 Scotch bonnet chile, pierced (if you like it very spicy, mince it) *see Cook’s Note
- 1/2 heaping teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/3 cup light coconut milk
- 8 ounces medium shrimp, peeled
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Pat the chicken dry, and season with some salt and pepper. Add the chicken, smooth side down, to the pan and cook until brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a plate. Add the onion and garlic to the pot, and cook until the vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the allspice and tomatoes and cook until the juices are almost evaporated. Add the chicken broth, kale, sweet potatoes, okra, bay leaves, the 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, Scotch bonnet, and thyme. Bring the liquid to a boil, adjust the heat to maintain a gentle simmer. Cook, uncovered, until the chicken is cooked through and the sweet potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes.
- Stir in the coconut milk and the shrimp and simmer until the shrimp turn pale pink and are firm but not tough and rubbery, about 2 minutes. Ladle the stew into warm bowls and serve.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 357 calorie |
| Total Fat | 10 grams |
| Saturated Fat | 2 grams |
| Carbohydrates | 40 grams |
| Dietary Fiber | 6 grams |
| Protein | 30 grams |
Reviews
This dish was very tasty and very easy to make. Good when you need an “all in one” dish for a busy night. I have two teenage boys and the gobbled it down and went back for seconds. Nice taste of the islands – and a nice variation to the Asian dishes I tend to make. Due to limited access to some produce, I used spinach instead of kale and omitted the okra.
I substituted boneless for bone chicken thigh, yams for sweet potatoes, a spicy jalapeno and thai chile pepper for the Scotch bonnet chile and did not put in the okra (family doesn’t like). I don’t feel these substitutions should have made that much of an impact. My wife loved the flavors but did not like the dark meat of the chicken. She recommends using the breast. I think instead of the chicken, I would use seafood (clams, mussels, crabs, and fish…) and maybe either a spicy sausage, or chorizo and ditch the chile.
This dish was incredibly easy to prepare and we don’t do a lot of Caribbean influenced meals, so it was a treat for the taste buds. I will incorporate this dish into the cycle of meals I cook.
While this recipe may or may not be good, I wouldn’t call it a “Caribbean Pepper Pot”. There are several versions of pepper pot in the Caribbean and the one here seems to most closely resemble a Jamaican dish.
Traditionally a “Pepperpot” refers to the national dish of Guyana. This dish originates from an Amerindian dish consisting of different meats (pork, beef, pig tails, cow heel etc.) stewed for a long time with CASAREEP, spices, herbs and peppers. Casareep is a preservative made from concentrating and flavouring the sap of bitter cassava/yuca and is absolutely ESSENTIAL to this dish.
Pepperpot does NOT contain coconut milk, tomatoes/tomato paste or vegetables. Also, it is NOT pepperpot UNLESS it contains casareep. In addition, I wouldn’t call a dish “pepper pot” simply because it contains hot peppers; many dishes cooked in the Caribbean contain hot peppers.
Please rename this dish since the current name is misleading both for the people who know what pepperpot is and for the people who are attempting to make a pepperpot. This is not a pepperpot.
Very simple to make, very healthy, and very tasty! Next time I think I might go up to two peppers though, as one doesn’t make it as spicy as I think it should be. However, a few dashes of hot sauce when serving worked pretty well this time around though.
The flavors in this recipe are fool proof. We made it with sausage and shrimp instead of chicken and it was great. A little soupy, but that’s fine the broth is so yummy. If you don’t like spicy, used a few red pepper flakes instead of the scotch bonnet.
I dont think i would want to try this recipe by just looking at it, This recipe is missing the key ingredient in pepperpot, that is cassereep(made from the yuca root) it is so not caribbean like. Pepperpot is the national dish of Guyana, it is an amerindian dish and has a lot of flavor, while i appreciate the variation, it takes away from the tradition taste. Please change the name to something else, every caribbean person knows that there is no pepperpot without cassereep.
I don’t know what happened to mine, but it was not spicy at all. Perhaps I didn’t prepare the pepper right, but it really didn’t have any kick to it. Otherwise it did taste great.
Yum, I knew I would like it from the minute I smelled the start of step 3. I followed ingredients to a tee, except I forgot to buy a pepper so I added cayenne. My hubby and I loved it. Surprised by the kale and sweet potatoes(which I cut smaller), not something we eat but the unusual blend of ingredients was scrumptious.
this recipe was amazing.I enjoyed every bite of it!i would definitely recommend this to someone else to make for their family.