Haitian patties are a type of “fritay,” which are fried foods like meat and plantains. Sometimes, fritay is served with a spicy coleslaw side dish called “pikliz.” If you ever visit Haiti, you have to try fritay. You can often see merchants selling them on the streets!

The patties are made of dough and filled with meat or any filling of your choice; I usually make them with ground beef. In my culture, we don’t measure anything, which may be a problem when following this recipe.

Marinade Ingredients:

1 medium onion

1/2 of a bell pepper (green or red)

3 cloves of garlic

1 stalk of green onion

A few bunches of parsley

Optional: ground pepper

Patty Ingredients:

Ground beef (or any other ground meat)

All-purpose flour (around 1 cup)

Small spoonful baking soda

Water (around 1/4 cup)

Pinch of salt

Drop of hot sauce

Optional: diced, hard-boiled eggs

Directions:

First, marinate your meat. I marinate my meat using a Haitian seasoning called “epis.” To make epis, coarsely chop up all the marinade ingredients and add everything to a blender. Blend until smooth like a paste.

To cook your patties, add a little bit of water and place on a pan over low heat. Cook for 10-15 minutes until the water evaporates. After you cook the meat, let it sit while you start with your dough.

For the dough, put flour and baking soda inside a large bowl. Then, fill another bowl with water, adding salt and hot sauce to taste. Add the water mixture to the flour gradually, mixing at the same time until you get a firm dough. After that, roll the dough on a medium or flat slab depending on the size you want your patties to be.

Then, the most fun part: you start filling the dough with meat. Add diced hard-boiled eggs to the meat, if you would like. Although eggs are optional, the patties taste delicious with them! Close the patties from left to right and press both ends down, kind of like dumplings.

To fry them, put a pan on high heat. After heating the pan, add oil. Then, once the oil is heated, lower to medium heat and fry the patties. Watch them carefully and keep turning because they burn easily.

Then, serve and enjoy, because I know you will! Haitian patties are a lot of hard work, but it pays off.

This piece also appears in our December 2018 print edition.