How many households still swizzle callaloo, leave meat overnight in the slow cooker to have it falling off the bone the next day, or make buss up shut by hand on a tawa? We’re willing to bet not many.
Today, you can press a button, wait 15 minutes and dinner is served.
The modern kitchen is built around speed, with high-tech gadgets replacing the hands-on work of preparing meals on the burner from scratch.
Take the air fryer, for instance, which manufacturers claim can deliver crispy food using up to 80 per cent less oil than deep frying.
Globally, industry market reports show the sector has skyrocketed to more than $1.2 billion and is projected to reach $1.9 billion by 2030.
Food purists, however, warn that these shortcuts are eroding the identity of our food. The topic has divided top chefs over whether these appliances are a brilliant evolution for busy lives or a serious compromise on genuine flavour.
The Trini taste
Local chef Gerard Marquez, aka Chef G, isn’t one to compromise on authenticity, even when using kitchen aids. With nearly 20 years in the food industry specialising in culinary fusion, he notes that our traditional food culture is changing.
While high-speed blenders make it easier to prepare green seasoning and other ingredients for a weekday pelau, they eliminate the elements that define our cooking: flame, heavy metal and time.
He points to a breakfast of sada roti and tomato choka on an electric stove that completely changes the profile.
“Yuh knead the flour soft, ‘balay’ the roti and put it on the tawa, sada swell nice and thing eh, but yuh ain’t getting the authentic taste. You cud shift that tawa all yuh want and sakay the sada one side, but it has no fire to kiss the dough and give it that flavour,” he points out.
“If yuh have a gas stove, then you have flame so you get a better taste and end result. Now traditionally this was made on fireside with chulha. To me nothing beats that. The sada gets so much flavour from the burning wood and even the clay used to make the chulha. The tomatoes roasted in a wood fire have such a smoky, even earthy taste.”
When it comes to the air-fryer craze, Chef G believes it wasn’t designed with Caribbean dishes in mind, but rather as a more efficient and healthier way of preparing fast food and American or European dishes.
“It’s not like you can make a bake and shark, saheena, phulorie or accra in it, if yuh know what I mean. Those traditional foods won’t be what they are if they are not deep fried.”
Still, many people swear by air fryers for roasting provisions, peppers and tomatoes, or even jerk chicken, when they want something quicker and lighter. It gets the job done. However, cooking with a cast-iron pot as opposed to stainless steel undoubtedly makes a difference to flavour because it is better at retaining heat, which helps when making stews and curries and achieving that iconic “bunbun” in a “wet” pelau.
In his own professional work, Chef G balances efficiency with the old ways. He creates his own geera, garam masala and curry from scratch using an electric grinder to save time instead of the mortar and pestle his grandfather taught him to use. Yet, for events, he refuses to use a convenient gas grill, opting only for wood coals because “something about that burning wood fire just makes the food hit differently.”
He tells Guardian Media, “Imagine a marinara pasta but the sauce is made like tomato choka, roasting the tomato on open flame till charred, bunjay onion, garlic and pimento, but then it’s cooked and blended till smooth, adding butter together with basil and bandania for a velvety marinara with an Indo-Trini taste. Food isn’t just about putting something in yuh mouth or just getting full. It’s enriching and edifying the body, mind and soul.”
American food scientist and television host Alton Brown has been a vocal critic of the air fryer.
“There is no such thing as frying in air.”
He says the real technique requires fat or oil to transfer heat. Furthermore, the chemical process that gives browned food its rich flavour—the Maillard reaction, where heat breaks down amino acids and sugars to create a deep, savoury crust—behaves differently in a dry convection basket compared with the moisture-retaining heat of a heavy clay or iron pot.
Passing down traditions
The bigger worry, some experts warn, extends to Generation Beta. If a child never witnesses the slow reduction of a stew or the unique cultural art of kneading dough for a proper fry or coconut bake, those skills face extinction. The kitchen stops being a space for family tradition and becomes nothing more than a convenient stop.
But like it or not, technology is here to stay. Whether you’re Team Contemporary or Team Traditional, when it comes to food, you can’t really go wrong by cooking with love and serving it with a smile.
Quick Culinary Tips
● Air fryers: For fresh, non-processed ingredients, adding a mist of oil is completely optional and mainly helps accelerate surface browning or mimic a deep-fried texture.
● Slow cookers: To prevent a watery or flat flavour, reduce added liquids by roughly one-third compared with a standard stovetop recipe, and add fresh herbs or acidic elements (such as a squeeze of citrus) at the very end.
● Immersion blenders: Continuous high-speed blending breaks down vegetable fibres too aggressively, which can make callaloo turn slimy rather than smooth. To replicate the rustic texture of a traditional swizzle stick, use short, manual pulses while raising and lowering the blender.
● Convection ovens: Small countertop ovens have very little cavity mass and lose ambient heat instantly when the door is opened, which can affect the rise of traditional bakes. Preheating a heavy cast-iron skillet inside the oven beforehand helps provide a stable baseline of radiant heat.
