Trini Corn Soup: The perfect after party snack

In Trinidad, corn soup has become one of the more popular street foods available. Nourishing, hot and spicy it does the trick every time to assuage that hunger and replenish sagging energy levels. This is the premiere after-fete food, warm liquid love to set your feet on the right path home, the carnival pick-me-up. As you can no doubt tell I am a big fan of corn soup, but believe me when I say that it is also the favorite of many carnival masqueraders, J’ouvert revelers, and partygoers; the ill, the weary, and the wounded; and anyone else who craves delicious Caribbean comfort food.

Hot steaming corn soup....

Like many recipes that originated with the working classes, the quantities in the ingredients don’t need to be precise and there is no difficult method of cooking, it’s just a little time consuming. Corn Soup is in essence a Sancoche, which in Trinidad is a savory split pea based soup featuring a selection of ground provisions and root vegetables, which could include any of the following: corn, eddoes, sweet potato, dasheen, cassava or manioc (root crop of the Caribs), carrots, green fig or plantain, pumpkin and the like, along with some form of meat, usually salted pig tail. 

Corn soup bubbling...!

Feeding the masses!