Bajan Seasoning: The Wet Herb, Onion and Pepper Paste of Barbados

Bajan seasoning isn’t a jar of dry spice. It’s a wet, green paste from Barbados that you rub into slits in fish or push under the skin of chicken before cooking, and Ann Marie Whittaker, quoted by Dave DeWitt, says you’ll find it in almost every home in Barbados.¹ It’s made by grinding onion, green onion, garlic, fresh thyme and marjoram, parsley and hot pepper, usually with salt and often with vinegar and a warm spice like cloves or allspice. “Bajan” means a native or inhabitant of Barbados, short for “Barbadian.”

At a glance

What is in it

There’s no single recipe. Two bylined versions show where they agree and where they don’t:

Both get ground to a paste. DeWitt’s is a big, vinegary, salty batch meant to keep. Harriott’s is a small fresh batch for one meal. Whittaker, quoted by DeWitt, says you’ll find this seasoning in almost every home in Barbados.¹

Where the ingredients come from

You’ll often read that every ingredient in Bajan seasoning came from the Mediterranean. The native ranges in Kew’s Plants of the World Online tell a wider story:

So the herbs are Mediterranean, the alliums Central Asian, the cloves from the Moluccas and the allspice from the Caribbean region. The hot pepper is a Capsicum chinense type (Scotch bonnet or the local “bonney” pepper), and Gernot Katzer’s Spice Pages notes that the fierce heat of chinense cultivars matters in Caribbean cooking.

The name Barbados

The island’s name is usually traced to Portuguese. A 2024 Cari-Bois News report, republished by Global Voices, says the Portuguese called it “Los Barbados,” meaning “the bearded ones,” after the bearded fig trees that covered the landscape.¹⁰ Stories crediting a particular Portuguese navigator with naming the island on a voyage to Brazil weren’t documented in any source we could open, and we found nothing tying Bajan seasoning’s herbs to Portuguese influence.

Flavor and the compounds behind it

Bajan seasoning tastes green, oniony and hot, with thyme’s sharpness, a sweet herbal note from marjoram and a clove-like warmth in the background. The chemistry comes from the ingredients:

Cloves and allspice share eugenol, and the two recipes use one or the other for that warm note. We found no test of them head to head as a swap, though.

Compared with jerk. Jerk shares several ingredients. The Smithsonian’s history of jerk names pimento (allspice) and Scotch bonnet as essential, and lists scallions, garlic and thyme among modern ingredients.¹⁶ Bajan seasoning, as the recipes above write it, leans harder on fresh herbs (marjoram and parsley as well as thyme) and uses only a little warm spice. See jerk seasoning.

How Bajan seasoning is used

• Fish. Harriott says that in Barbados the seasoning usually gets stuffed into the fish’s cavity. He cuts four or five deep slashes on each side instead and rubs it in, then leaves the fish 20 minutes before cooking.²
• Chicken. DeWitt reports that a favorite use is to tuck it between the meat and skin of chicken pieces before grilling, baking or frying.
• The national dish. Cou-cou and flying fish is Barbados’s national dish. Saveur describes cou-cou as a cornmeal-and-okra porridge. Its version seasons the fish with thyme, scallions, garlic and Scotch bonnet, though it doesn’t call that mix Bajan seasoning. Global Voices reports that flying fish landings have dropped by almost half since 2011, according to Barbados’s Chief Fisheries Officer.¹⁰

Home cooks season pork, beef and curries this way too, but we couldn’t find a source that documents it.

Making and storing it

Grind everything to a paste in a food processor. DeWitt processes the onions, green onion, garlic and peppers to a coarse paste, blends the herb leaves with the vinegar, then combines both with the rest of the ingredients.

How long it keeps depends on the recipe:

Those are each recipe author’s own figures. We found no tested shelf life for homemade Bajan seasoning from a food-safety agency, so treat the low-salt, vinegar-free version as a fresh paste and keep it cold.

Safety

There’s no safety issue specific to the blend. The hot pepper is the part to handle with care: seed it, as Harriott does, and keep it away from your eyes. The DeWitt batch carries 3 tablespoons of salt in 2 to 3 cups of paste,¹ so taste before you salt the dish.

Health claims

Claims that Bajan seasoning helps with constipation, prevents food poisoning or stimulates digestive enzymes are ones we couldn’t trace to any study of the blend, or of its herbs at seasoning amounts. We’re not making any health claim for it.

Substitutes and comparisons

• Jerk seasoning and jerk seasoning substitutes
• Caribbean spices and Jamaican spices
• Jamaican curry powder

The individual ingredients: thyme, marjoram (and marjoram vs. oregano), parsley, garlic, chives vs. green onions, cloves, allspice (and allspice vs. cloves), habanero powder and black pepper.