One of the best pork curries I’ve ever had came from a cookbook.
Even more surprising?
The cookbook was written by Chef Kwame Onwuachi, one of the most celebrated names in modern fine dining.
But what makes Kwame’s cooking compelling is how deeply it embraces African, Caribbean, and Black Southern food traditions.
This Geerah Pork is a Trinidadian pork curry, and the name itself tells a story.
“Geerah” comes from the South Asian word for cumin, a nod to the East Indian influence across the Caribbean. From there, the dish becomes unmistakably Caribbean through the use of Scotch bonnet peppers, allspice, lime, and layered curry spices.
I’ve experimented with pork curries before, but they never fully clicked for me.
This one completely changed my perspective.
The seasoning doesn’t overpower the pork—it showcases it. Familiar curry spices suddenly taste new again.
I made a few practical adaptations for the home cook, including swapping habaneros for Scotch bonnets and using pickle juice instead of preparing a separate pickling liquid from scratch.
And honestly?
This might be the best pork curry I’ve ever made.
There are a handful of pantry staples and recipe components you’ll want to prepare ahead of time. For practicality’s sake, I scaled a few things back and made some home-cook-friendly substitutions.
Still, this is the extra mile that separates a good curry from one you think about for days afterward.
One thing that immediately stood out in Chef Kwame Onwuachi’s recipe was the curry powder.
This isn’t the generic yellow curry powder sitting forgotten in the back of your spice cabinet.
The blend leans heavily into toasted coriander and cumin with warm notes of allspice, anise, and fenugreek. It smells earthy, floral, and deeply aromatic in a way store-bought curry powders rarely do.
That said…
The original recipe makes a fairly large batch, so I scaled it down for practical home cooking purposes.
Highly recommend toasting the whole spices in a dry pan before grinding.
The original recipe makes a massive batch of pepper sauce. I scaled things back considerably and made a few practical substitutions using ingredients I already had in the fridge.
Throw everything into a food processor and blitz till smooth. Pour into a jar and place a little wax paper between the lid and the sauce because vinegar has a tendency to react with metal lids.
And fair warning:
this stuff has some kick.
Blend everything till smooth and bright green.
This is where the curry starts feeling unmistakably Caribbean. The culantro, thyme, peppa sauce and onion create something far more herbaceous and alive than your average curry marinade.
I swapped the pork belly from the original recipe for pork shoulder with a generous fat cap. You get a better meat to fat ratio and Pork Shoulder is cheap.
As it should be.
Leave a Reply