Belizean cuisine is an amalgamation of all ethnicities in the nation of Belize and
their respectively wide variety of foods. Breakfast consists of bread, flour tortillas,
or fry jacks that are often homemade. Fry jacks are eaten with various cheeses, refried
beans, various forms of eggs or cereal, along with milk, coffee, or tea.
Midday meals vary, from lighter foods such as rice and beans, tamales, panades (fried
meat pies), escabeche (onion soup), chirmole (soup), stew chicken and garnaches (fried
tortillas with beans, cheese, and sauce) to various constituted dinners featuring
some type of rice and beans, meat and salad or coleslaw.
In the rural areas meals may be more simplified than in the cities. The Maya use
recado, corn or maize for most of their meals, and the Garifuna are fond of seafood,
cassava (particularly made into cassava bread or Ereba) and vegetables. Belize abounds
with restaurants and fast food establishments selling fairly cheaply. Local fruits
are quite common, but raw vegetables from the markets less so. Mealtime is a communion
for families and schools and some businesses close at midday for lunch, reopening
later in the afternoon.
Regular deli items originally from the Mestizo culture that are now considered pan-Belizean
include garnaches, fried corn tortilla smeared with beans and shredded cheese, tamales
made from corn and chicken or its sister and panades which can be thought of as a
fried corn patty with beans or seasoned shredded fish inside and topped by a tangy
onion sauce.
The most famous Maya dish is called Caldo. Tortillas, cooked on a comal and used
to wrap other foods (meat, beans, etc.), were common and are perhaps the most well-known
pre-Columbian Mesoamerican food. Tamales consist of corn dough, often containing
a filling, that are wrapped in a corn husk and steam-cooked. Both atole and pozole
were liquid based gruel-like dishes that were made by mixing ground maize (hominy)
with water, but being the first much more dense used as a drinking source and the
second one with complete big grains of maize incorporated into a chicken broth. Though
these dishes could be consumed plain, other ingredients were added to diversify flavor,
including, for example, honey, chiles, meat, seafood, cacao, wild onions, and salt.
