Riaz Phillips’ Curry Goat

“You eat GOATS!” a fellow classmate wailed in horror as I recounted the joy of a recent meal of curry goat during a primary school conversation. Something about the way she added the “s” at the end made it sound insidious, like my family were cave-dwelling beasts. In the absurdly titled They Eat That? A Cultural Encyclopedia of Weird and Exotic Food from Around the World, this sentiment is echoed when the author mentions, seemingly with a literary nudge-nudge, wink-wink, that “Curry goat is actually one of the national dishes of Jamaica,” likely to the shock and dismay of its readers.

In retrospect, both point to the same Western reverence and sanctity towards eating certain animals, and the seeming disgust of consuming others. While goat is widely available at local butchers across Britain, particularly in areas with a high ethnic population, it has never fully entered the British culinary repertoire and it’s likely this prejudice is the reason. Although goat (and mutton) was favoured during the Tudor period of British history, especially in pies, it doesn’t seem to have caught the national imagination since.

Things are different in Jamaica, where meat options were once markedly more limited. Versions of curry goat have been so popular for nearly a century that it was once in contention for the honour of national dish. Writers as far back as the 1600s revealed that goat was preferred to mutton by people of West African descent, and the remnants of this are clear today. As popular as curry goat is in the Caribbean, goat-laden pepper soup is equally adored by those from Sierra Leone to Nigeria, hence our shared nonchalance at the thought of eating goat. The indentured Indian community who arrived in late-19th century Jamaica must have revelled at the reception to their native slow-cooked goat curries, often made from rationed mutton on the weekends. With this meeting of peoples, Caribbean curry goat was born.

While the likes of tikka masala and green Thai curry have reached mass awareness in Britain, curry goat lags behind. The reason? Perhaps, the lack of affinity to bones. Popularized high-street Caribbean chains attempt a substitution with bone-free lamb, yet for curry conservatives (small “c”) many of Caribbean heritage stay steadfast in their support of the presence of goat bones. While some ethnic cuisines have diverged from their cultural origins to crossover, put simply Caribbeans aren’t having any of it!

I’d very much suggest using this recipe as an introduction to the joy of bones. The search for the last piece of wonderfully seasoned gristle hidden in the crevice of a bone is like a treasure hunt and the ability to strip a bone to its gleaming white core will hold you in good stead with many Jamaican elders.