Eating healthy during fall: Jamaican brown stew fish recipe

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Here is another great recipe to help us in our quest to continue eating healthy during fall!  I hope you love it and feel free to share your faves with me:)

Jamaican Brown Stew Fish

eating healthy during fall

Adapted from “Brown Stew Fish” found on JamiacaTravelandCulture.com

Some of you may already know that I spent a couple years in the U.S. Virgin Islands and loved it!  I really miss island food and culture especially when “the dark time” starts to creep in here in the Pacific Northwest.  Luckily I still live in a location with an abundance of fresh fish and I try to eat fish at least once a week, otherwise I am pretty much a meatless cook.  This week I bought some wild caught Pacific Cod not really having a recipe in mind.  After I got it home I searched around online and came across one of my favorite Caribbean dishes called stew fish (I pretty much loved “stew anything” while I was there).   This recipe was already pretty healthy but I did make a few adjustments.  I served this with brown rice and it was fabulous!  I hope you enjoy:)

Ingredients

  • 2lb fish fillets
  • 1 tablespoon of lime juice
  • 1 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 teaspoon of pepper
  • 1 onion diced
  • 3 stalks of scallion minced
  • 1 habanero pepper minced (or adjust amount to your desired spice level)
  • 1 red pepper diced
  • 3 cloves of garlic minced
  • 1/2 inch of ginger grated
  • 3 tomatoes chopped
  • 3 tablespoons of flour
  • 3 sprigs of fresh thyme (or 3 teaspoons of dried thyme)
  • 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
  • 1 tablespoon of browning *see recipe at the bottom of this post
  • 2 tablespoons of soy sauce
  • 2 cups of water
  1. Rinse the fish filets and put them in a bowl with just enough water to cover and lime juice, leave them to marinate while you make the browning sauce.
  2. Make the browning sauce, the recipe is located here and at the bottom of this post.
  3. Mix flour into 1/4 cup of water and set aside
  4. Take fish out of the water mixture and pat dry, season with salt and pepper
  5. Heat large shallow pan with oil, I used about 2 tablespoons of coconut oil, until hot.  Add fish (I like to break it up into smaller chunks as I cook it).  After about 5 minutes when the fish has sealed you can add in the onion, scallion, habanero, red pepper pepper, garlic, tomatoes and thyme for three minutes.
  6. Add the water, soy sauce and browning and simmer for five minutes.
  7. Stir the flour/water mixture in to the stew then add the fish.  Simmer for five minutes, occasionally stirring gently.
  8. Serve with Rice or a traditional Jamaican “rice and peas”
  9. Put on some Caribbean music and enjoy!

Browning Sauce

A version of this sauce is used a lot in Jamaican cooking, this is a healthy version and it makes quite a bit.  Feel free to cut it down to only make what you need.  Also you can substitute brown sugar and regular salt if you prefer. This recipe comes from thatgirlcookshealthy.com.

Ingredients
  • 2 cups of coconut palm sugar
  • 1 cup of water
  • 2 tsp of himalayan pink salt
  1. Add the sugar to a saucepan and turn on medium heat.
  2. Use a wooden spoon and begin to slowly stir. The sugar will start to dissolve and turn into a syrup consistency while darkening.
  3. If the sugars begin to smoke too quickly then reduce the flame or switch off the stove and continue to stir while charring the sugar.
  4. Once the sugar darkens to a dark brown almost black in colour remove from the stove and carefully add the water. The saucepan will yield plenty of steam and splutter which is normal – keep on stirring the pan.
  5. Once the sauce is formed, allow to cool before adding the pink salt and pouring into a sauce bottle.