Belize: Food and the National Dish

A food culture built from many communities

Belize is small but ethnically diverse: Creole, Garifuna, Maya (Mopan, Yucatec and Q'eqchi'), Mestizo, Mennonite, East Indian and Chinese communities all live here, and each has kept its own distinct food traditions rather than fully blending into one. English is the official language, a legacy of Belize's history as British Honduras, but the food leans as much on the wider Caribbean and on neighbouring Mexico and Guatemala as it does on Britain.

The national dish: rice and beans

Rice and beans, cooked together in coconut milk rather than boiled separately, is Belize's national dish, traditionally served with stewed chicken, potato salad and coleslaw for Sunday lunch. Cooking the rice and beans in the same pot, so the rice takes on the beans' colour and the coconut milk's richness, ties it to the rice-and-peas family found across the Caribbean, and the first Sunday in September is celebrated as National Rice and Beans Day.

Garifuna food

The Garifuna, of mixed African and Indigenous Caribbean descent, settled Belize's southern coast after the British exiled them from Saint Vincent, and keep one of the country's most distinct cuisines; their language, dance and music were proclaimed a UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001. Hudut, mashed plantain served with fish cooked in a coconut broth, is their best-known dish, and cassava bread (ereba), made from grated and pressed cassava root, is a Garifuna staple and an important part of their identity.

Dishes to know

Five more to recognise across Belize's different communities:

• Fry jacks — deep-fried pieces of dough, shaped as circles or triangles

and eaten with refried beans, eggs or cheese, a common breakfast nationwide.

• Panades — fried corn tortilla turnovers filled with fish or beans, a

common snack from the Mestizo tradition, often topped with pickled onion.

• Salbutes and garnaches — fried tortilla snacks: salbutes, from the

Yucatán Peninsula, are topped with pulled chicken and pickled red onion, while garnaches carry refried beans, cabbage and cheese.

• Escabeche — in Belize, an onion soup, one of the country's traditional

midday dishes.

• Cassava bread — a flat, dense Garifuna staple made from pressed grated

cassava, traditionally baked on a griddle.

Marie Sharp's and other flavours

Coconut, lime and habanero chilli run through cooking from nearly every community here, and Belikin, the country's best-known beer, made by the Belize Brewing Company, holds a similar place of pride to Marie Sharp's.

Eating as a traveller

Vegetarians can rely on rice and beans, tortilla-based snacks and fried plantain, though most main dishes and the national dish itself are built around meat, fish or coconut-based broths with fish stock. Bottled water is widely used and is the simplest choice for visitors. Seafood on the cayes and coast — conch, lobster, snapper — is a genuine highlight and usually very fresh.

What to take from the table

Rice and beans with stewed chicken is the dish to try first, but Belize's real culinary story is its range — a plate of hudut on the southern coast and a plate of salbutes near the Mexican border can come from the same small country and taste like two entirely different places.