Antigua and Barbuda

North America · This week's dish comes from St. John's

About Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda's national dish is fungee and pepperpot, cornmeal dumplings with a rich vegetable-and-meat stew. Saltfish, seafood, and tropical produce define a warm Eastern Caribbean table.

Fungee is cornmeal cooked with okra, not a mushroom, and it is turned with a wooden stick until it is smooth enough to shape into a ball. Antiguan pepperpot is not the Guyanese one: no cassareep here, but a thick stew of salted meat, spinach or other greens, okra, aubergine and pumpkin, cooked down together.

Ducana is the sweet counterpart, grated sweet potato and coconut with sugar and spice tied in a banana leaf and boiled, eaten with saltfish so the sweet and salt run together. The two islands are dry by Caribbean standards, which is why saltfish and preserved meat sit so firmly at the centre of the older cooking.

The wider picture: A collision of Indigenous, colonial, and immigrant tables.

This week's dish: Antiguan Fried Dumplings with Cheese

Golden, slightly sweet fried dumplings split open around a wedge of sharp cheese, a simple, filling Antiguan breakfast.

Serves 4 · Prep 20 min · Cook 15 min · Difficulty: easy

See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →

Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.

Discussion prompts

1. Find Antigua and Barbuda on a world map or globe. It sits in North America. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?

2. Antiguan Fried Dumplings with Cheese comes from St. John's, in Antigua and Barbuda. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?

3. Read the short story behind Antiguan Fried Dumplings with Cheese. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Antigua and Barbuda shaped what ends up on the plate there?

4. Compare Antiguan Fried Dumplings with Cheese to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Antigua and Barbuda about how they make and share it?

5. After you cook Antiguan Fried Dumplings with Cheese, add Antigua and Barbuda to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.

🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers

🍽 Open the full Antiguan Fried Dumplings with Cheese recipeServings dial, dietary swaps for every table, and its own print button.

🍳 Kitchen SchoolShort lessons on the core skills the recipes lean on.

📋 More teacher resourcesThe printable passport, how to run Country of the Week, and every country page.