Cou-cou and Flying Fish (Barbados)

Cou-cou (pronounced coo-coo) and flying fish is the national dish of Barbados. Eating the dish is a must while in Barbados, not because it is the national dish but because your taste buds will thank you!

Cou-cou is traditionally simply cornmeal cooked with okra. Cou-cou can be made these days using breadfruit – a starch that grows on a tree with a consistency similar to potatoes – instead of cornmeal. Some people skip the use of okra.

Flying fish is a small silver-blue fish that looks like a dragonfly. These fishes, approaching the water's surface at 55 kilometers per hour, use their tiny wings to propel themselves up to 30 to 40 meters in the air, hence earning them the colloquial name "flying fish." Barbados is known as "the land of the flying fish," and the fish is depicted on the one Barbados Dollar coin. The fish, either fried, steamed, or stewed in the national dish, is loved on the island.

The first time I had flying fish in Barbados, it was love at first taste.

I had dinner with a local family, and the mother had prepared flying fish using Delish Bajan Seasoning. My love affair with the fish led me to unknowingly consume the national dish for the first time while at lunch at Round House, a historic oceanfront inn and restaurant in the East of the island in a fishing village called Bathsheba. I ordered the dish simply because it was the only menu item with flying fish.

I shamefully later found out from a Bajan while in Dominica that the dish I had on multiple occasions while in Barbados and that I loved was Barbados' national dish. So, I decided to educate myself further. In the process, I discovered the dish's connection to Africa.

Cou-cou, half of the national dish, was a regular meal for the slaves brought over from Africa – Sierra Leone, Guinea, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Cameroon – to work the sugar cane fields.

It made sense that the national dish prepared the traditional way reminded me of a Ghanaian dish known as bankul, a meal made of fermented corn or maize flour eaten with okra stew and fish.

You can find the national dish all over the island in eating establishments offering Bajan cuisine. If you find yourself in Barbados or another country with flying fish and you like to cook, here is a video created by VisitBarbados you can follow.

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